The global community is commemorating the International Labour Day on May 1st to acknowledge the contribution of workers in their respective progress. But the workers in Pakistan especially those living or working in Faisalabad have forgotten their scripts to demand better working conditions owing to power crisis. Their demand at the day is focused on the restoration of electricity and gas to their factories to avoid being kicked out of their jobs due to factory closure.
A lot of global changes have been witnessed in the realm of labour rights since the inception of the Labour Day movement but the social landscape of Pakistan is painting a thorny picture of industrial and agriculture labour communities who are living in an endless pain and misery. In 19th century, the workers of United States of America (USA) got together for their rights. They were not asking for a pay raise or pension. Their only dream was that they should also be treated as human beings. This state of mind emboldened them to demand that their working hours should be fixed and they should also be entitled for a weekly holiday.
The main reason behind the launch of this labour rights movement was that there was a practice of taking unlimited working hours by the workers in the industrial areas of Chicago in those days without giving them any weekly holiday and additional financial incentives. Consequently, all work and no rest led to the shortening of a worker’s life span. A look at the Pakistan Labour Policy 2010 shows that we have excelled all the civilized nations in granting rights to our workers. This document gives an impression as if it has been prepared by a labour body just to favour its members. But the situation on ground is 180 degree opposite to this piece of paper.
The cruelest joke in this labour policy is that minimum wages of a worker will not be less than Rs 6,000. This debacle is being posed as an achievement that the government of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has been boasting about in every corner of the country. According to the surveys, the monthly budget of an average-sized family (husband, wife and three kids) requires a minimum of Rs 15,000 just to achieve a bare subsistence level.
Pakistani labour class is suffering from loss of vision and lack of direction to find a way out of the dark tunnel. It is innocent enough to expect a bale-out from their oppressors. This is a fundamental defect in its approach that has prolonged their sufferings. Back in 1970, during the formative years of PPP under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the labour community rallied behind him, seeing him as their liberator. It was perhaps the first political experience of history that a labour community put their weight behind a feudal lord to steer them out of the evils of capitalism. This laboratory test was bound to fail due to a confused choice of action but the labour class refused to rectify their stance ever since.
At every election, they gave a divided mandate to the major political parties that sank them further in the depths of darkness and misery. The height of the social contradiction is that 80 percent of our population belonging to workers and laborers chose feudal, tycoons and billionaires as their leaders. As long as a true labour party takes the helm of affairs in the country, the problems faced by the workers are likely to grow like cancer cells. There is no political party at the national level that may fight for the rights of labour because the current setup has nothing to do with the poor.
