Recently, during a government ceremony, Ali Rabieih, Islamic Republic’s
eleventh government’s Minister of Labor, Cooperation and Social Welfare made
some comments and claims; to make some aspects of his activities and background
clear, it is fitting to provide a short response to those claims.
On February 8, 2014, quoting Rabieih, ILAN, Islamic Republic’s Labor News-Agency
reported, “I was a worker where with the blessings of the revolution became a
minister…. During Shah poor people had no chance of transmission between social
and political strata….. I was a factory worker, but I am a Minister now.”
Ali Rabieih knows well, how and with what kind of background in Islamic
Republic he received the ministry post. To know him and others, who with the blessings
of the defeat of the revolution and establishment of a government counter to
the main goals of the revolution, have received ministry and premiership posts,
recounting the background of the Minister of Labor is useful.
In early days after the triumph of the revolution, Ali Rabieih, together
with Ali Reza Mahjob, and another individual called Daneshmand, where these
days one can find him in the Commerce House, were among the Islamic Republic’s
macebearers, who acted as saboteurs against the independent labor
organizations. Their activities inside the Worker’s House also included
identification and arrest of the well-known labor-unionists. Those days, along
with monopolization and threatening of the independent organization in the
Worker’s House, Ali Rabieih was soon absorbed into information and security
organizations as well. Within the security organizations he worked with the name
“Brother Abad”; and during the bloody decade of the Eighties, he had an
effective presence in one of the Islamic Revolution Prosecutor’s branches. In interrogation
of some of the labor-unionists, such as Hassan Jalally and Hedayat Moalem, in a
branch designated for the labor problems in the Evin Prison and the “Joint
Committee”, during the years of 1982-1984, he played the main role. With the
launch of the Ministry of Information, Ali Rabieih became one of the deputies
of this repressive security agency. During the Nineties, together with Hosein
Kamali, he was one of the architects and designers of the temporary-contracts;
where workers rightfully consider such contracts and remember their initiators
with revulsion. Let’s not forget that during the Eighties, during the period of
bloody repression, in organizing attacks against the labor-syndicate centers
such as the “Association of Solidarity with Syndicates” and “Tehran and Suburb Workers’ Councils”, Ali
Rabieih had the leading role. He is one of the architects of the “Islamic Labor
Centers”; centers that severely violate and step-on the workers’ trade-union
rights. He was considered as an infatuated supporter of the “syndicate is
ungodly” slogan; and the initiative of cleansing the Worker’s House from honest
and conscious labor activists in early Eighties belong to him. Following his
and Hosein Kamali’s success in inserting temporary-contracts within the “laws”,
because of his background in security and labor-syndicates’ repression, for
some time along with Mohammad Javad Larijani, he “served” as a Secretary for
the High National Security Council. With such background, one can realize how,
why and with what kind of report-card he has reached the ministry rank; and in
the position of a Minister, who he is serving, and he has secured and securing
what kind of peoples’ interests.
