KARACHI (PPI): At the conclusion of a three-day protest camp held at Karachi Press Club against the contractual system, jointly organized by the National Trade Union Federation Pakistan (NTUF) and Home-Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF), labor leaders addressed the workers’ gathering emphasized that for over half a century, labor laws and the Supreme Court of Pakistan have recognized permanent employment as a fundamental right for workers.
This right, hard-won through workers’ struggles globally, forms the bedrock of a worker’s identity and their relationship with their employing institution. A legally binding written appointment letter is central to this identity.
The rally was led by Riaz Abbasi of the National Trade Union Federation and Zehra Khan of Home Based Women Workers Federation. Nasir Mansoor of NTUF addressing the rally, said that permanent employment and written appointment letters not only ensure the payment of wages, gratuity, bonuses, and the legal right to unionization and collective bargaining but also guarantee registration with social security and old age pension schemes, as well as benefiting from workers’ welfare schemes.
Based on that right, workers had the legal recourse to resolve disputes with their employers. In addition, he said that permanent employment helps workers become socially, politically, and economically active citizens, while also providing mental and psychological satisfaction.
Mansoor further stated that capitalists view permanent employment as a burden on the organization and perceive the associated rights as obstacles to profit, industrial development, and investment. To evade their recognized duties through tripartite consultations, they had found an escape route in the form of the contractual (THAKADARI) system. That system releases employers from all responsibilities and maximizes profit by exploiting workers to the highest degree. The contracting system had spread like cancer in factories, financial institutions, government and semi-government departments, autonomous bodies, municipal corporations, private security providers, and all types of workplaces.
Mansoor emphasized that every government and its institutions, particularly the labor department, had played a key but heinous role in imposing the contractual system with the support of capitalists.
Veteran Labor Leader Comrade Usman Baloch that Currently, the majority of the 80 million workforce were employed under some form of the contracting system, which had driven their families below the poverty line. Due to this pernicious contracting system, 95% of workers were deprived of written appointment letters, social security, pensions, minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, paid weekly holidays, annual leave, gratuity, and bonuses. She further said that the contractual system also deprives workers of their constitutional right to organize, leaving less than 1% of workers able to exercise their right to unionize and engage in collective bargaining.
Asad Iqbal But of HRCP stressed that the contracting system had turned workers into machines generating wealth without any rights. Workplaces had become confinement due to that system, forcing workers to work like slaves, with no fixed end to their workday.
He pinpointed that at the behest of employers, contractors had made it common practice to dismiss workers without cause at any time. The contracting system in factories had forced millions of workers to live lives worse than animals, while the wealth of capitalists and the number of factories had increased exponentially.
Zehra Khan of HBWWF said that the capitalists and government institutions had long been conspiring to provide legal protection to the contracting system. Now, even international organizations like the International Labor Organization (ILO) providing technical expertise and assistance for that purpose. She further said that capitalists and states were jointly determined to remove all obstacles to profit by transforming the production process from formal to informal through a contractual system. Labor resistance against legalizing such lawlessness has become an urgent necessity. She emphasized