A group of retirees from Social Security, the steel industry, mining, and the cultural sector held protest gatherings in various cities across the country over the Islamic Republic's continued failure to address retirees' demands.
The Social Security retirees' gatherings took place on Sunday, the 16th of Dey, in cities including Ahvaz, Shush, and Rasht.
A protest gathering of Social Security retirees and pensioners in the city of Shush was held in front of the buildings of the Social Security Organization and the city's governorate office.
At their gathering, they chanted slogans including: “The public treasury and the state coffers — a playground for thieves,” “We say wages are too low — the price of bread keeps rising,” “We have neither money nor a way out — the people have been left helpless,” “Where is the curb on inflation? You are lying to the people,” and “Retiree, raise your voice — cry out for your rights.”
Social Security retirees in Ahvaz held a protest gathering in front of the organization's provincial office.
“The fruit of the government's work — plundering the people's pockets” and “Where is the curb on inflation? You are lying to the people” were among the slogans chanted at this gathering.
A number of Social Security retirees also gathered in front of the Social Security provincial office in Gilan, chanting protest slogans and demanding that their grievances be addressed.
A number of steel-industry retirees also staged protest gatherings on the 16th of Dey in Khuzestan and Isfahan over the steel pension fund's disregard for their demands.
Retirees from the Khuzestan Steel Company gathered in front of the provincial governor's office and the city governorate buildings in Ahvaz. They also held a protest march along the route between the provincial governor's office and the city governorate buildings.
This group of retirees chanted slogans including “Retiree, raise your voice — cry out for your rights,” “Until we win our rights — we will not back down,” and “Implementing pension equalization is our absolute right.”
In Isfahan as well, steel and mining retirees, gathering and marching along Neshat Street, chanted slogans including “Only on the pavement will our rights be won,” emphasizing that their protests would continue until their rights were secured.
In Kermanshah too, civil-service, Social Security, telecommunications, and cultural-sector retirees held a joint gathering in front of the provincial Department of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare to voice their demands.
This group of retirees chanted slogans including “We want neither war nor killing — we want lasting peace,” “This is the final message — without us, your work is finished,” and “Our costs are in dollars — our wages are in rials.”
At the end, they read out a resolution declaring that if their demands continued to go unaddressed, they would carry on their united protest gatherings in the weeks ahead.
Part of the closing resolution of the joint gathering of Kermanshah province's retirees read: “Given that after years of demanding our rights and repeated appeals to the competent authorities, nothing has changed in the lives of us retirees, and that today, as in the past, we remain caught, alongside other disadvantaged strata of society, in the grip of livelihood hardship, we have come once again to raise our voice for justice and our rights, more loudly, against poverty and ruinous corruption.”
In past years, retirees have repeatedly held gatherings and marches in various Iranian cities to protest the failure to meet their demands.
The dire livelihood situation of retirees and pensioners has also caused the number of their protest gatherings to rise sharply in recent years.
The human rights website HRANA reported in its annual report on the 6th of Dey that in 2024, at least 1,279 labor gatherings and strikes took place in Iran.
According to this report, most of these gatherings were related to wage demands by trade groups, protests against poor economic conditions, and protests against the inefficient management of state institutions in the Islamic Republic.
This data shows that, despite the Islamic Republic's promises, the livelihood conditions of retirees and workers in Iran are growing worse by the day.