KARACHI, Dec 1: A workers’ meeting here on Sunday rejected the Industrial Relations Ordinance 2002, calling it an anti-worker law and demanded of the government to immediately withdraw it.

The meeting, organized by the National Labour Federation (NLF), was attended by representatives of various federations of labour unions and other trade union forums. It demanded that the government should approach the true representatives of the workers to reformulate a worker-friendly policy.

The meeting decided to organize an all-Pakistan meeting of federations, representing trade unions and other workers’ bodies, in Karachi on Dec 15 to formulate a future strategy and to mobilize workers to counter, what they called, the anti-worker move of the regime.

A sub-committee, headed by S.P. Lodhi, was also formed to organize the meeting.

The NLF chief, Mohammad Islam, told Dawn that his organization and other workers’ representatives had approached various political parties to enlist their support and many of the parties, he added, had expressed their solidarity with the workers.

He said the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal leader, Liaquat Baloch, had asked the workers’ representatives to prepare a comprehensive draft of proposals on the issue so that he would introduce it as a private bill in the parliament.

He said leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) had also assured them and other labour leaders that they would support all such moves in the parliament which could help resolve the issues being faced by the workers.

The meeting observed that the IRO-2002 was not only against Article 3 of the Constitution — which relates to abolition of all kinds of discriminatory laws — but was also against the International Labour Organization’s conventions of 1987 and 1998.

It said that by introducing the ordinance the government had tried to restrict the workers’ right to healthy trade union activities in many organizations, like Pakistan Post Office, PTCL, EOBI, Workers’ Welfare Board, Railways, etc.

The labour leaders said the government wanted to abolish those rights of the workers which were available even during the pre-partition period. They said that the government instead of improving the IRO-1969 has further curtailed the rights of the workers.

The meeting, presided over by the All-Pakistan Trade Union Organization’s S.P. Lodhi, was attended by NLF chief Mohammad Islam, Pakistan National Labour Federation’s Mohammad Shareef, Muttahida Labour Federation’s Nabi Ahmad; National Trade Union Federation’s Saleem Raza; Shaukat Ali of the All-Pakistan Trade Union Congress; Malik Rafiq of the All-Pakistan Federation of Labour (Durrani group); Shaikh Majeed of People’s Labour Bureau and others.