LAHORE, April 30: The working class all over the world will commemorate Labour Day on Wednesday (today) by taking out rallies and holding meetings to pay homage to Chicago martyrs while workers in Pakistan will take to street primarily for electricity and gas, non-availability of which has rendered hundreds of thousands of them jobless.
Lack of recognition on the part of government, denial of fundamental right of freedom of association besides law and order situation will include the other challenges the working class will be highlighting during their May Day engagements.
Unprecedented electricity and gas outages resulted in partial or complete closure of scores of industrial units, especially in textile sector. The situation also slowed down the economic growth, increasing unemployment rate to an alarming level.
During the previous regime, the working class remained almost a non-entity, especially after the passage of 18th Amendment that devolved labour and trade union matter to the province. The situation seems to remain the same as the labour class cannot find any considerable mention in the election manifestoes of major political parties.
“Labour rights are part of human rights but the manifestoes contain mere slogans. The PPP has promised to increase minimum wages to Rs18,000 a month the PML-N to Rs15,000 while the PTI has linked it with inflation and with the condition that it does not affect the competitiveness of industry,” says veteran trade union leader Khurshid Ahmed.
Trade union has not been given its due recognition though it has always been on the forefront in every movement.
“Trade union is the basis of democracy,” he says and adds that the manifestoes have been silent about workers basic rights, especially the right to association. There should have been guarantees to ensure fundamental rights of workers, especially the women. There should have been measures to revive tripartite labour conference, include rural or agricultural sector workers in the minimum wages mechanism, revival of independent factory inspection machinery.
The manifestos also lack measures to ensure provision of free and uniform education to each child, jobs to the youth and `decent’ working conditions and rational wages to the workers along with social protection against sickness, accidents, old-age, elimination of abuse of child and bonded labour in society, says Mr Ahmed.
The manifestos should have clear-cut guidelines to attain economic self-reliance by enforcing austerity in all walks of life and by getting rid of the culture to rely on loans and debts at the earliest.
Agrarian reforms to eliminate the outdated feudal system should have been part of the manifestos describing that uncultivated state land would be distributed among landless peasants after allocation of adequate resources for promotion of their farming skills and provision of marketing facilities for their products.
The manifestos lack measures aimed at attaining economic self-reliance in true sense, development of infrastructure to overcome the ongoing energy crisis and creation of job opportunities for the youth, said the trade union leader.
Pakistan Workers Confederation’s Punjab chapter president Rubina Jamil regrets that the manifestoes should have measures for social and economic uplift of women who constitute more than half of the population, by ensuring equal opportunities of education and employment, elimination of discrimination against them and enforcement of principle of equal pay for equal work.
Pakistan, she says, has been a signatory to 36 conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). However, the government has yet to formulate laws in conformity with the eight core ILO conventions.