Imagine trying to make ends meet on mere six thousand rupees a month. This is supposed to be the minimum wage for an unskilled worker. Yet, millions of female and male skilled workers operating tools such as sewing machines and cutters or welding equipment, are paid what is laid down for the unskilled - six thousand a month or down to half as much. In other words, an illegality is being committed hundreds of millions of times over every day. But the poor have neither the money nor muscle to assert their rights in a court of law.
There must be some good Samaritan lawyers around who would fight for them pro bono? Yes, there are, but nowhere near enough to come to the rescue of tens of millions of workers being routinely cheated. In fact, labour matters are not even dealt within courts of law.
“They are dealt with by the Labour Department which is not part of the judiciary,” points out Nasir Mansoor, National Pakistan Trade Union Workers.
It means that workers, despite being citizens, are not entitled either to the same quality of justice or fair wages that the middle-class and elite receive. The Labour Department’s track record speaks for itself in effect; they have merely maintained the status quo for the employers.
There is no doubt that the feudal structure was already brutal in the rural areas since well before 1947. But who do we have to thank for this continued inequitable state of affairs in the urban areas as well? The USA in part, a country that is also associated with propping up undemocratic, unelected leaders, creating debt and dependency through the IMF, double standards in terms of trade and workers rights.
Karamat Ali, Executive Director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, narrates the particular interest of the Americans in contract workers. One day, in 1989, soon after the Zia era ended, the workers union office in Karachi received a phone call from the American Embassy requesting to come and meet the labour representatives.
“They came down and told us that if we wanted to see rapid economic development in Pakistan, we should welcome foreign investment,” recalls Karamat, “We replied that we were not against foreign investment as such. But then they told us that if we kept insisting on rights for contract workers, then foreign investment would be discouraged from coming into Pakistan. The American Embassy had taken on itself the task of promoting this point of view against contract workers.”
In other words, foreign investment was conditional, not just on cheap labour but dirt-cheap labour, treating workers as sub-human, to be made to accept whatever the employers were willing to pay them - not the recommended amount needed for a decent minimum standard of living. The Americans clearly had double standards at the outset: one for their own citizens, and another for other countries. And the Pakistani government nonchalantly accepted the violation of their citizens’ constitutional, social and economic rights, and continues to do so.
Most people are unaware that the majority of workers in the country are more correctly casual labour, whether skilled or unskilled, who are recruited by contractors. Most of the contract workers are women - invisible home-based workers and harvesting peasants exploited to the hilt by contractors.
But there are almost as many male contract workers. And the common denominator is that both men and women workers are grossly underpaid. The term ’contract workers’ generally gives the misleading impression of the worker being protected by a written contract which guarantees not only a minimum wage but extras that cover overtime, health protection that covers accidents or illness from the materials or chemicals being handled on the job. But it turns out that there is no such thing as a written contract for ’contract workers’.
So what is a contract worker? It’s a worker who works for a fixed wage for a fixed period of time; or in the case of rural workers, for a season, such as the harvesting and primary processing season which may extend no more than a month or two, and which wages they will have to make last till the next harvest. But in Pakistan, a ’contract worker’ has no legal foundation. “Technically, under the labor laws, there is no such thing as a contract worker,” explains Nasir Mansoor, Deputy General Secretary of the National Trade Union Federation, “There are only probationary workers. At the end of the three months probationary period, a worker either has to be made permanent or is let off.”
“The supposed contract worker is not hired by the employer,” elaborates Nasir. “He is simply a worker who is recruited by a contractor on behalf of the employer. In this way, any direct link between the worker and the employer is broken. So, technically, the worker does not work directly for the employer but for the contractor, although the wages come from the employer. Thereby, the employer escapes from all his responsibilities - not having to pay fair or minimum wages, overtime, annual increments, for healthcare and insurance, or other benefits.”
All these are due not only under the law, but as human rights as well. Given that worker protests have been generally heavily covered by the media, why is it that television coverage of the current protest of contract workers at the Gadani ship-breaking yard been rather lukewarm or absent? Part of the reason is corporate globalization under the WTO, first forced in by the IMF in exchange for loans to pay off previous debts, by opening up our borders to any foreign investor who wants access to our natural resources and markets as well as cheap labour - just like in colonial times. Today the law of unscrupulous ’free trade’ takes precedence over the country’s constitution and laws.
The Gadani workers are indispensable for ship-breaking. However, says Nasir Mansoor, “In Pakistan, the definition of a worker is someone who works on the premises of the factory. Because ship-breakers don’t work on any premises, they are not considered real workers.” Instead they are treated even more callously.
Furthermore, the Gadani ship-breakers do highly-skilled work, not unskilled, the type not everyone can execute. Over half of them hail from the northern areas. Ship-breaking is highly hazardous in which they have to use flame-torches, but workers are not provided full protective gear. Some try to provide for themselves but equipment is prohibitively expensive. They also risk falling from heights which means broken bones and being laid off for many months, if they are not crippled or killed. In the urban areas, similar work would fetch workers with the same level of skill anywhere between Rs. 600/- and Rs. 1200/- a day. Gadani workers have to settle for Rs. 200/- a day; those who are more seasoned and faster may get Rs. 300/- or so a day, but they are in the minority.
Like thousands of other factories all over the country, ship-breaking investors use middlemen-contractors to keep workers off their books. The contract system, supposedly illegal, is alive and thriving, and actively assisting employers - industries, businessmen and small factories alike - in cooking their books, abusing and cheating workers, and thereby evading taxes.
Taxation departments, and concerned ministers and parliamentarians need to be taken to task as to why they haven’t investigated these profiteers. How is the cut-up metal, which is measured in terms of weight, accounted for? Don’t middlemen bill them for labour provided? Of course, under-billing is the norm in Pakistan, but what are the numbers of workers claimed against the amount of metal dismantled and cut? Any researcher or investigator could discover that just by watching and calculating over a few days or weeks.
Becoming a permanent employee, entitles workers to other rights and benefits such as paid leave, sick leave, education for children, annual and cost-of-living increments, house rent allowance, group insurance, pension and so on. However, contractors and employers long ago resolved the ’problem’ of having to do so - by simply dismissing the worker before the probationary period ended without having to assign any reason, and re-employing the dismissed person after an interval. That’s how hundreds of thousands of workers, women and men, who have been contract workers all their lives and died as contract workers, have never been able to achieve permanent employment or a pension. Consequently, realising that written probationary contracts were meaningless and more likely to keep them out of work for longer periods, workers resigned themselves to continuous work for unjust wages.
What remains a wonder is why suo moto notice has never been taken of the violated rights of workers who constitute the overwhelming majority of our population. Without their labour, we wouldn’t be able to take our food for granted; and obscenely rich feudals and politicians, foreign junkets and ostentatious lifestyles, presidential and prime ministerial palaces, and unelected and dubiously elected leaders would not be possible.
What too many well-heeled employers tend to ignore - because they have been allowed to get away with it for too many decades - is that behind every worker, whether a contract worker or a permanent worker, there is a family dependent on his or her earnings to survive on, partly or wholly. Today, six thousand rupees fails to cover the simplest of food, shelter, clothing, water and transport. Countless women-headed households work for half the minimum wages, dooming their children to an ill-fed life of illiteracy and no future prospects.
By Najma Sadeque