PESHAWAR, March 22: The People’s Labour Bureau, the labour wing of the Pakistan People’s Party, has condemned what it calls ‘discriminatory policies pursued by PIA in promoting its employees in absence of a collective bargaining agent. The PLB held a convention at which speakers demanded that the airline’s management should to hold referendum for grant of CBA status to one of the labour unions.

PPP’s provincial chief Rahimdad Khan, PLB’s provincial president Jehanzeb Khan and general secretary Aslam Adil, PLB Punjab’s general secretary Hameed Bhatti and others addressed the convention. A large number of industrial workers from Abbottabad, Hattar (Haripur), Tarbela, Swabi, Amangarh (Nowshera), Mardan and Kohat road industrial estates attended the convention.

The speakers criticised what they termed the anti-workers policies of successive governments and claimed that PPP’s government had for the first time in the history of the country given constitutional protection to labour rights and presented a comprehensive labour policy in 1972.