Lebanon’s workers are groaning in silence or in hushed voices that find no echo in the ears of officials. A crisis-ridden reality has been pushed by war into a bottomless abyss. Is there anyone willing to throw workers a lifeline? Or do the signs point toward even worse days ahead?

This year, the shock endured by workers is more bitter than ever before. No sooner had they caught their breath after the war in support of Gaza and begun gathering the pieces of their losses than Khamenei’s “war of revenge” came along, adding new burdens to their already fragile living conditions and threatening both their present and future.

Around 1.4 million workers and employees in Lebanon, including 280,000 in the public sector, are today living under enormous pressures that exceed their ability to endure. The latest war, which caused losses estimated at around $5.5 billion, inflation that has reached 25% since the beginning of the year according to Mohammed Chamseddine, researcher at Information International, and the displacement crisis affecting around 1.5 million Lebanese citizens, together form the harsh backdrop of a daily life in which wages are gradually being eroded. Seventy percent of institutions across Lebanon have been affected by the reality of war, leading either to the dismissal of workers or to salary cuts of up to half. Unemployment, which stood at 36% before the war, rose afterward to between 43% and 45%, according to figures from the General Confederation of Lebanese Workers.

These alarming figures reveal the severity of the conditions facing Lebanon’s workers. They were preceded by the direct 300,000 Lebanese pound tax imposed by the government on every gasoline canister, which directly affected workers and became a daily burden accompanying them in every aspect of life.

Workers’ unions are active, but under wartime conditions their movement remains limited. As for the relevant ministries, they appear mired in financial incapacity and administrative confusion that restrict their ability to respond to workers’ suffering.

Lebanon’s labor unions summarized to Nida Al Watan the range of hardships endured by workers. Foremost among them is arbitrary dismissal practiced by some institutions under the pretext of war and crushing economic conditions, without paying any compensation to those dismissed. Although the justification may appear legal, some institutions are exploiting these circumstances to fire employees who contributed to accumulating their profits during peacetime instead of standing by them during wartime. Although the data regarding those dismissed has not yet been fully verified, unions have already handled 2,500 review cases on the matter, particularly in service provider companies linked to Electricité du Liban (EDL), in Liban Post branches in the south, and in the industrial sector, especially food industries.

Losing their source of livelihood

What worsens the crisis of arbitrary dismissals is the absence of the Ministry of Labor and the labor arbitration councils, which once played a role in resolving disputes between workers and employers. Today, the Ministry of Labor itself is effectively “displaced” and has not returned to its main headquarters in Chiyah. As for the arbitration councils, the situation is dire: 16,000 complaints had already accumulated there from October 2019 until March 2023, and after that date not a single complaint was resolved, for several reasons, including the fact that government commissioners at these courts receive no more than 100,000 Lebanese pounds as transportation allowance, prompting many of them to refrain from attending court sessions.

The consequences of the absence of arbitration councils today are catastrophic. The law requires a worker to register a complaint within one month of dismissal, otherwise the right expires. But how can dismissed workers file complaints today when they do not know where or to whom they should submit them? Especially since labor arbitration councils in Sidon, Tyre, and Nabatieh are closed or no longer functioning. As a result, the worker who loses a job faces not only the interruption of income, but also the closure of all avenues for justice, turning arbitrary dismissal from a challengeable case into an imposed reality with no escape.

In addition to arbitrary dismissals, Lebanon’s labor unions point to another painful reality directly tied to military operations and Israeli attacks. This situation has had a direct impact on the agricultural sector in the south and on the workers who depend on it for survival, after lost harvests and burned trees, in addition to the collapse of livestock activities involving sheep, cattle, beekeeping, and fishing. All of this has also affected food industries linked to agriculture and livestock breeding, especially since most industrial and commercial institutions in Lebanon, particularly in peripheral regions, are small or medium-sized enterprises that are quickly affected by economic conditions.

On another front, the war deliberately contributed to the systematic destruction of commercial markets, whether in the south, Baalbek, the southern suburbs, or even Beirut, leading to the loss of livelihoods for a large number of workers and employees, the disappearance of job opportunities, and rising unemployment. Displacement also caused hundreds and thousands of workers who depend on simple freelance professions and the informal economy (such as plumbers, painters, car mechanics, and similar tradesmen) to lose their daily work and thus their source of income. The war’s repercussions on the tourism sector also led to the closure or disruption of many tourism establishments and the dismissal of their workers.

Collapse of salaries’ value

The loss of jobs is not the only factor leaving negative effects on workers. The collapse in the purchasing power of wages due to soaring prices constitutes the second major burden weighing on them. The gasoline tax has turned into a snowball effect, driving up transportation costs, prices of goods and food products, and rents, with inflation reaching 25%, thereby devouring an equivalent share of wages that, in many cases, no longer exceed the minimum wage and are worth no more than $300. In addition to inflation, the greed of traders and business owners, who sought to compensate for their losses from the pockets of poor people, workers and employees, has further worsened the situation.

In the public sector, the picture appears no less harsh. Even the 6 salary payments approved as an attempt to ease the impact of the crisis have not yet been disbursed because of the government’s financial difficulties, prompting several sectors to announce warning strikes, including public school teachers and some public sector employees such as civil registry departments and others. Even the transportation allowance set at 450,000 Lebanese pounds has become effectively worthless, leading to demands today for the provision of five liters of gasoline per day instead.

Another factor exhausting Lebanon’s workers remains the absence of a social protection system and the weakness of benefits provided by guarantor funds, including social security, the Cooperative of Civil Servants, and even insurance companies. These benefits are no longer compatible with the cost of medical treatment and hospitalization, and the gap between them has become enormous. According to labor unions, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), which previously covered hospitalization costs for some poor categories at its own expense, has, due to emergency events, shifted its priority toward covering war injuries and postponed accepting non-urgent cases, including even cancer cases. Patients are now required to cover part of the costs themselves, leaving poor workers and employees unable to obtain decent healthcare. As for social security, there is an additional problem reflected in the requirement for insured individuals to provide documents from the institutions employing them in order to complete their paperwork, while many of these institutions have become destroyed, closed, or displaced.

Has Lebanon therefore become in need of a new social contract? Or will patchwork solutions continue to dictate the fate and lives of workers?