“He lost his balance and fell from above. At that moment, he tried to grab something with his hands and feet, but to no avail.” This is how the staircase erector, Raafat Muhanna Hossam (26 years old), describes the fall of his childhood friend and work colleague, Mahmoud Hassan (25 years old), from a height of 22 meters, losing his life instantly, while they were working on installing the external stairs to cover the second minaret of the Grand Mosque in the city of Mosul with Helan stone.
“This was in June 2021, and we, like other workers in various types of construction, did not use any safety measures.” Raafat says in a tone of reproach, then adds sadly: “That day was happy and fun, and he was joking with me very kindly, as he always did, as he told stories and situations we had gone through.”
He recounts how this accident could have been avoided if there had been a safety fence or even just a rope tied to Mahmoud, “He tried to hand a tool to a worker close to him when his leg slipped, so he lost control and fell.”
Mahmoud was not registered with the Social Security Department or the Labor Union, and he had signed a pledge disclaiming responsibility for the company that employed him on a daily wage for any work-related injury he was exposed to, according to Muhammad Hassan, Mahmoud’s older brother, which Raafat confirmed to us, because he had also signed a similar pledge on 2/7/2021.
Brother Muhammad, a construction worker with a daily wage, and he has four other brothers who also work in construction, all of whom are like him, said about this to Al Aalem Al Jadeed: “None of us has a guarantee or union IDs, and I do not originally trust the existence of a worker’s right in Iraq, so I did not review Social Security, and I do not have additional money to pay for membership subscriptions to entities that never think about us!”
Social Security is a social protection program for which special laws are regulated, related to providing financial security for the individual in the event that he reaches old age or disability, as well as being fired or leaving work. Some countries stipulate in their laws and legislation that their citizens are forced to register in social protection networks.
This right was recognized and included among the basic rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights No. 22, as it states that “every person has the right to social security,” and he has the right to have security provided to him through “national efforts and international cooperation in accordance with the structure and resources of each country.”
As for the Iraqi case, the laws stipulate that the worker must receive a wage sufficient to meet his basic needs, enabling him to support his family, and to protect his wage in a way that ensures that no part of it is deducted, as stated in Article (4) of Labor Law No. (71) of 1987.
96% of workers are without insurance
Hundreds of work accidents have occurred to workers from Nineveh over the past years, as a result of which they lost their lives or were seriously injured, without them, if they remained alive, or their families, if they died, receiving compensation because they had not concluded contracts regulating their work with their employers, individuals or companies, nor even any guarantee. An official grant that gives them rights in cases of death, illness, disability, dismissal from work, etc.
A study prepared by the Planning Department in Nineveh Governorate, affiliated with the Ministry of Planning, in 2021 showed that 96% of workers in the private sector work without social security, so they will not have a retirement entitlement when they reach the legal retirement age (60 for men and 55 for women, or service of up to 20 years). Also, 95% of them work without health insurance.
The study included age groups between 10-30 years of workers, across Iraq, including Nineveh, and it was found that only 19% of them work in the government sector and 81% work in the private sector.
Director of Nineveh Statistics, Nofal Suleiman, points out that the reality of young people in the private sector “is not taking place as desired, as at least 85% of them do not work under a contract in Iraq, and the percentage rises in Nineveh to reach 93%.”
On a tour of the “Al Aalem Al Jadeed” inside the “University” markets, “Nabi Yunus”, “Al-Darkzliyya”, “Algiers”, “Aleppo Street”, “Bab Jadid”, “Bab Al-Saray”, “Al-Dawasa”, “Al-Faisaliah”, and “ Al-Muthanna and Banks,” on both the right and left sides of the city of Mosul, which includes shops selling clothes, food, electrical appliances, furniture, restaurants, barbers, tailors, and others, we found that the relevant inspection teams had only visited a few of these areas, and that was two years ago.
This means that the vast majority of these shops in Nineveh are not registered with it, especially since many of them were newly established or reopened after the end of the military operations between 2016-2017, which caused major destruction to the city’s infrastructure.
As a result, most of the workers in these shops, who do not have contracts guaranteeing their rights with their employers, are not registered with the Social Security Department. There are many reasons for this, including what is cited by employers who agree that workers do not remain stable at work for long. This is what economic specialists and lawyers object to by asserting that contracts can be concluded no matter how short the duration of work is.
Other reasons relate to the workers themselves, as we found through our conversations with many of them that they are completely ignorant of what social security means and which body they should register their information with. They are not registered in the workers’ union and do not know anything about their tasks or even its location. The common denominator among them all is a lack of trust. There is a guarantee for their rights.
But on the other hand, we found a small number of workers registered with the Social Security Department, and the company they work for, or their employer pay the annual fees due for their registration on a regular basis.
“Al Aalem Al Jadeed” tried to conduct an interview with the director of the Nineveh Federal Labor Department, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Labor and is responsible for inspection, according to members of the labor union, but employees there told us that he is on a long vacation, and they cannot provide any information without his approval or an official letter from their department headquarters. General in Baghdad.
Safety procedures
Most construction workers in Nineveh, with their various specializations, are forced to carry out their work at heights, sometimes high, which exposes them to the risk of falling, especially since the overwhelming majority of them do not take safety measures.
It is not common for them to wear helmets, protective masks, climbing belts, or shock-reducing shoes and clothing, because employers do not provide them with it, and they are unable to buy it themselves due to the low wages they receive in exchange for the financial burdens that fall on them to support themselves and their families.
What is surprising is that some of them who have the ability to purchase them refuse to use them, claiming that they are heavy and hinder their work, or they use as an excuse the high temperatures, especially in the summer months when construction is usually active. However, the situation is different with construction companies. Although they are few, they oblige the worker to follow procedures. Safety for fear of the liability that you may be exposed to due to the contracts you conclude with workers.
In the Al-Hamdaniya district, east of Mosul, Qasim Fares (28 years old) had to wrap his torso and limbs with an orange belt consisting of three parts, with a helmet covering his head and thick gloves in his hands, to climb an Internet tower 26 meters high to install a surveillance camera on top.
Qasim says that he obeys the company’s orders and wears what ensures his safety. He smiles and adds: “I will expose myself to punishment that amounts to expulsion from work if I disobey the orders.”
He believes that this suits him, because he is not a government employee (it is common among workers that only government employees have all the rights, including the guarantee), and included in the contract signed between him and the company for a period of one year, subject to renewal, are his financial rights, and that the company pays the fees related to him at the Social security department.
He thinks for a while as he looks up at the camera that he had finished installing, and says: “My contract does not address the case of injury during work, but that’s okay. Safety measures protect me, and I will always be careful to prevent accidents.”
Raad Ismail Al-Badrani, Director of the Nineveh Retirement and Security Department, stresses the importance of social security for human life, as it means, according to what he states: “a guarantee for the family because its members will receive retirement rights in the event of the death of the working head of the family or his exposure to an injury that prevents him from working, and in all cases it will be guaranteed by the state makes no difference between him and its employee in this case.”
Regarding the reason why inspection teams do not visit markets and commercial areas to register workers there, Al-Badrani attributes it to “the small number of employees,” as some committees consist of only one employee. Pointing out that “new employees have been appointed to the Inspection Division, but the circumstances that the country has experienced during the past few years have delayed their commencement of work.”
He also attributes the failure to register workers in Social Security to the lack of cooperation between the employers and the workers themselves with the inspection teams, and he says, “The worker does not come to us, and when we go to the project, he has fled the place, and all of this is so that the project owner or the company does not pay the fee required to register it.”
The evasion of companies and employers from registering their workers is very common. During a small tour of hundreds of poultry fields, slaughterhouses, egg hatcheries, feed factories and warehouses spread across the Nineveh Plain east of Mosul, it appears that there are thousands of active workers, but if the forms for these projects are checked by the Social Security Department It turns out that there are one or two workers at most registered in each project and fees are paid for them, while there is no trace of the rest of the workers.
The legal consultant specializing in the animal production companies sector, Touma Girgis, commented, saying that the Social Security Department, with its employees, administration, and ministry, knows with certainty that all projects do not provide accurate data regarding the numbers of workers employed by them, in order to evade paying the monthly fees resulting from their registration.
He explains, “This matter has been happening for decades, and between the years 2003 and 2017, inspection teams were not able to visit the projects due to the security conditions at the time, and now the excuse is made of insufficient working personnel.”
He added, during his talk to Al Aalem Al Jadeed, by saying: “Even if there are active inspection teams, their members will be bribed or the workers will be hidden from their sight, and this is known to everyone in Nineveh.”
Girgis believes that the solution lies in educating workers to demand their rights, obligating individual and corporate project owners to register workers in social security, and not leaving the matter of estimating the number of workers to project owners, as it is not reasonable for one worker to work in a factory that requires dozens of workers, so it should be determined The number of workers with the establishment of each project.
Low wages
There are those who call for workers’ registration fees to be counted within the salaries or wages they receive so that they themselves can register their names with Social Security and pay the resulting fees, but this call clashes with the low wages of workers and their variation according to the moods and convictions of employers.
On December 28, 2017, the Council of Ministers submitted a recommendation to the Parliamentary Labor Committee to set the minimum wage for a worker at 350,000 dinars per month, approximately ($236), instead of 250,000 dinars, or approximately ($168), which was set in Resolution 178 of 2013.
In practice, there is no clear impact even regarding the decision that was issued in 2013, as most unskilled workers receive wages of less than 250 thousand dinars per month. The wage that the (unskilled) worker receives per day ranges between 7-10 thousand dinars, about 4-6 dollars, considering that it does not work on a daily or constant basis.
The announcement of the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Ahmed Al-Asadi, last Monday, setting the minimum wage within the Social Security Law to be approved by Parliament, sparked talk about workers’ rights in Iraq, as “Al Aalem Al Jadeed” discussed in a previous report the possibility of implementing social justice and contributing to raising the economic level. For workers, and the mechanisms for implementing it, in light of a ministerial clarification that it will rely on inspection tours of shops, restaurants, etc., and will move toward raising awareness about registration in order to guarantee wage limits.
Ayman Ismail (22 years old) has been working as a construction worker with a daily wage ranging between 6-12 thousand dinars, 4-8 dollars since 2012. He was injured in his right foot twice, the first was in 2015 and the other in 2018, and on each of these two occasions, he did not receive health assistance from any party.
He says with some confusion: “I do not belong to a labor union, and I do not know about the existence of social security, and I will not waste my time inquiring about it, because I do not believe anything the state says.”
In contrast to the workers who work in projects, companies, or with contractors, there is a large segment of them who work independently, such as those not associated with projects and companies and taxi drivers. They cannot, even if they wanted to, register with the Social Security Department because there are no laws regulating their association.
The Director of the Security Department explains this by saying: “The self-employed worker must register with offices, and the new amendment proposed by the House of Representatives dealt with such cases in what is called uncontrolled optional inclusion, such as the liberal professions, as their owners can register with Social Security, and it was supposed to be read The law was given a final reading to be approved, but the country’s political circumstances prevented that,” he said.
The department does not have accurate statistics for the number of guaranteed workers, attributing the reason to the department being bombed during the military operations that took place in the governorate between 2016-2017, which, according to what he said, brought it back to zero.
What is currently known to the Department of operating projects in Nineveh, which is the second largest Iraqi governorate, is limited to only 49 registered projects, and there are 7,457 workers for whom financial security benefits or fees are paid, amounting to 17% of the wage, and more than 2,500 workers receive a retirement salary.
In the Labor Union, the answer to our question regarding the numbers of workers was almost similar, as the union in turn lost its records due to security events and the war to liberate Nineveh from ISIS, and it is now rearranging its papers again, while there were 8,000 workers registered with it in 2014, that is, before ISIS took control. In Nineveh, only 300 workers are registered today.
The union, through its employees, attributes the small number of union members to the workers’ lack of awareness of the union’s activity and its defense of their rights, according to what they mentioned. They also indicated that during the entire year of 2021, they promoted 20 retirement transactions for workers affiliated with it, and they pointed out that this is a very small number in a governorate with a population of more than four million people, and which contains tens of thousands of workers.
What does it mean if the worker is not guaranteed?
There are many shops and project owners in Nineveh who employ (unskilled) workers, that is, those who do not have academic qualifications or experience in a particular profession. Their wages are usually low, and most of them are ignorant of their rights, and some of them do not trust at all that there is someone who can work for them. Whether it is a labor union or the Security Department.
Employers may be one of the reasons for consolidating this belief among workers due to the lack of commercial activity at times and ignorance of social security at other times.
Hikmat Majeed Mustafa (50 years old), owner of wholesale shops on the left side of Mosul, is one of them. He does not believe that the workers will recover the fees he pays for them for social security, “I did not register for social security, and frankly, I do not have confidence that the money that I will pay as fees will be returned to the workers,” he says. Insistently.
He believes, like many others, that the situation in Iraq is volatile, and that a decade does not pass without something radical happening in it that brings everything back to its starting point. He confirms to “Al Aalem Al Jadeed”: “I do not know of any of my shop-owner neighbors who have registered workers with insurance. This conviction was strengthened by the fact that more than two years had passed since the reopening of his store without any government employee visiting it, whether from the security or even from others.”
In turn, Alia Ghazi Al-Atraqji, a lecturer at the College of Law at the University of Mosul, believes that the lack of guarantees for workers will result in several problems, including depriving them of adding their period of service in the private sector when they are appointed to the public sector.
It turns out: “According to Article Five of the effective Iraqi Labor Law No. 37 of 2015, the guaranteed worker’s service is counted as actual service for the purposes of salary and retirement when appointed to a job in state departments and the public sector. Also, the worker may be exposed to work injuries and disability. When he is registered in Social Security, he can obtain What is called disability benefits or pension.”
Al-Atraqji stresses the necessity of educating the worker to demand his rights by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, and that the state should move to force the private sector, such as employers, companies, civil society institutions, and others, to register their workers, and to tighten penalties on violators and those who circumvent the law by registering a number smaller than the number of real workers they have.”
In her interview with Al Aalem Al Jadeed, she said, “The problem lies in the lack of proper implementation of the law and the lack of deterrent penalties for violators.” However, there are those who hold the workers union responsible for workers’ ignorance of their rights in Nineveh, which is denied by the union, which in turn accuses successive Iraqi governments of neglect and indifference with regard to workers.
Shifa Taha Aziz, head of the Trade Union Federation in Nineveh Governorate, says, “Workers’ rights have been neglected since 2003 until the present time, and the Trade Union defends workers who belong to it and those who do not belong as well, but unfortunately the worker has no awareness of belonging to the union.”
Aziz also denies that his union received any financial sum from the government and stated that it manages its affairs through subscriptions paid by workers, and that workers in other Iraqi governorates were included in the distribution of residential plots of land to them, by a decision of the Council of Ministers at a time when Nineveh workers were deprived of this.
He continued, saying: “When we approached the Nineveh Governorate Office about this, they made it difficult for us, while many other governorates had achieved achievements in this field, including Samawah, Kut, Nasiriyah and the majority of the southern governorates, except for the western governorates such as Ramadi, Salah al-Din and Nineveh,” attributing the reason to The departments that govern these governorates.
Aziz confirms what we found through our investigation that there are projects that evade workers’ registration, saying: “There are projects that have at least 150 workers, but the project owner reduces his workers to evade paying the taxes that fall on him. We know that and the security knows, but We have no authority over him?”
The head of the Nineveh Workers Union complained about the presence of supposed unions and federations that defraud workers and collect money in their names without security measures being taken against them, as well as companies employing workers of foreign nationalities in violation of the laws, all of which ultimately affects the worker in Nineveh and his future.
With the light of every dawn, Nashwan Farouk (34 years old) stands with a group of hammers in front of him near the Prophet Yunus market on the left side of Mosul, waiting for a knocker looking for a demolition or transportation worker. He says as his eyes follow a pickup truck approaching the place: “My capital is my hammers and my arms…”
Before he completed his words, he moved quickly towards the car that was parked close to his location on the sidewalk, and returned after a short conversation with its driver, with signs of disappointment on his face, as he complained about the lack of job opportunities, “This is our situation, we strive for our livelihood… We succeed in work one day and fail for days.”
Next to him was his colleague Hamid, who was nearly sixty years old, and the lines of time were clearly visible on the prominent dark contours of his face and on his rough hands. He said as he rearranged a few iron wires that he used to clean sewer pipes: “We are forgotten, we have no rights… and nothing is guaranteed in our lives, so how can I guarantee myself with the insurance department?!”
