KARACHI: Trade union and labour support organisations have welcomed the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s landmark judgment about contract workers having legitimate and fundamental right of forming union or becoming part of it and taking part in union referendums or elections.

In a joint statement issued on Saturday, Karamat Ali, executive director, Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler); Nasir Mansoor, secretary general, National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), Habibuddin Junaidi, president, Peoples Labour Bureau Sindh; Liaquat Sahi, Democratic Workers Union State Bank of Pakistan; Zehra Khan, Home-Based Women Workers Federation; Farhat Parveen, NOW Communities and others underlined the need for implementation of the order in all companies and corporations across the country.

Justice Maqbool Baqar of the SC, who was heading a two-member bench, wrote in the judgment on a petition filed by the Sui Southern Gas Company management against an Islamabad High Court judgement that the purported arrangement/contract between the company and their purported labour contractors cannot be allowed to be used as a device to deprive workers of their legitimate and fundamental rights to forming a union or becoming part of it.

The labour leaders said that since the introduction of “neoliberal” economic policies in the country, companies had started employing their workers and employees on contract and third-party system in which workers did not have legal labour rights. They are even deprived of their constitutional right of association and are not allowed to form trade unions, they added.

The trade unions in many nationalised companies such as banks have been demolished as the banks and corporations have started a contractual employment system.

Similarly, in many private-sector companies the management avoids appointing employees on a regular basis, which deprives the workers of their rights of social security and other benefits, including the right to join a trade union.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2020