OVER the last four decades or so, at least three labour commissions were formed to consolidate and simplify labour laws. However, the suggestions they made and the draft legislation they proposed were not even considered for putting up before parliament.

There are some 190 labour enactments and rules made thereunder, with different definitions of ‘worker’, ‘employer’ and ‘establishment’. Besides, the laws and rules have outdated provisions. For instance, there is the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, and three Rules of 1937, 1938 and 1960. Then there are the Minimum Wages Ordinance, 1961, the Rules of 1962 and the West Pakistan Minimum Wages for Unskilled Workers Ordinance, 1969.

Labour laws should be simple, especially for those ensuring compliance with statutory requirements. The Sindh government, in collaboration with the ILO, has prepared and circulated the Sindh Labour Code, 2024, among employers and workers’ bodies. The SLC is purported to have consolidated 20 labour laws, inclusive of legislation such as the Industrial & Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance; Factories Act; Industrial Relations Act; Shops & Establishments Act, etc.

Separate meetings organised by the Employers’ Federation of Pakistan and the National Trade Union Federation were held on June 8, 2024, to discuss the draft legislation contained in the 318-page SLC. In the EFP meeting, participants were of the view that consolidation should have been based on existing laws, making their enforcement simple by removing obsolete provisions and making them relevant to existing needs.

The draft legislation of the SLC is very confusing.

Instead, the draft legislation of the SLC is very complicated and confusing. For inst­ance, ‘worker’ is defined as an employee, but ‘employee’ has been defined separa­tely. Besides, it is mentioned that “a person exercising the authority, duties or responsibilities of an employer” is a worker.

It is mentioned that a person is a worker irrespective of the nature of work, which includes “skilled, unskilled, intellectual, clerical, professional, managerial, administrative and any other kind of work”.

The Industrial & Commercial Employ­ment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968, defines ‘workman’ as any person employed to do any skilled or unskilled, manual or clerical work for hire or reward. Based on this definition, progressive organisations have divided their workforce into two categories: management and non-management. They have been managing employee relations successfully with this structure over more than five decades.

Now that this structure is being dismantled through the SLC and all the employees of an organisation are to be considered as ‘workers’ except for the ‘occupier’, it is difficult to comprehend how businesses will be operated and discipline maintained without the well-established layers of management hierarchy. Various provisions of the SLC are so complicated and confusing that even experienced practitioners of industrial relations are at a loss to understand them.

In the realm of disciplinary procedure, various acts of omission and commission by a worker, including misconduct, have been unnecessarily labelled ‘gross misco­n­duct’. The most frequently committed acts of willful insubordination, actions sub­v­e­rsive to discipline and habitually sho­wing up late for work, have been dele­ted from the list of misconducts. A worker accused of misconduct has been allowed two weeks to submit his explanation, instead of the decades-old practice of three days.

At present, the role of an inquiry officer conducting a domestic inquiry into the charge of misconduct is confined to recording statements of the accused, prosecution and defence witnesses, and their cross examination. Besides, he has to ensure that the accused is not put under any pressure by the management and that the inquiry proceedings are fair. Under the SLC, the officer will again communicate the charges to the accused employee and ask him to submit a written defence within seven days.

The system of hiring third-party workers has been there since the inception of industry in Pakistan. Its rationalisation by SLC has been opposed by labour federations, who say the Code should have been formalised through prior consultation with a tripartite commission.

Consolidation and simplification should be based on the contents and scope of existing labour laws. Nevertheless, provisions which have become redundant should be deleted and the maintenance of registers and other manual record keeping should be automated. The key labour laws have evolved since the British era. Their sudden replacement with differently intended and worded laws will not only jeopardise industrial functioning but also make implementation difficult.

The writer is a consultant in human resources at the Aga Khan University Hospital and Vital Pakistan Trust.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2024