The (Iranian) state and the (triangularly employed) agency workers A diary of (ir)responsibility and exclusion

In 1994 and as a part of an already adopted approach of “Marketization of the public sector”, the Iranian state introduced a novel type of “precarious jobs”, a group of even less legal and occupational identification and support, “Sherkati-ha”, also known as the “Agency workers”. Based upon a rather comprehensive examination of the history of this formal, yet furtive, introduction and implementation, this study shows that the Iranian state has gone through a desultory process of minimalizing the “responsibilities” in the case of “Sherkati-ha”, while in effect, has met none of its proclaimed economic objectives. Suffice it to say, the free-market-based agenda of the state has been hardly effectual, either in keeping the state untouched by the ramifications of this “mass exclusion” or in coming up with the supposedly smart “pricing” of the contributed labor. All in all, the paradigmatic shift to the neoliberal ideologies in Iran has failed to realize the very bases of the “decent job” policies. That is, the promises of supporting the cooperatives and trade unions, and sponsoring the national plans of workforce training, have been neglected systematically.