Pakistan’s labour constitutes without doubt the most miserable community in the country. Their history is full of stories of ceaseless exploitation, broken pledges of uplift measures, withdrawal of legal protection and indifference to their basic rights. Many are the problems the employees in the formal sector face and many more fall to the lot of the workers engaged in the informal sector. These include obstruction to unionisation and lack of protection to union office-bearers to increased use of contract labour and non-implementation of ILO Conventions.

Considerable evidence is available to support the view that, in respect of key rights and freedoms, Pakistan’s labourers are worse off today than they were in 1947.

As the country’s labour prepares to observe day after tomorrow the 71st May Day since independence, we will skip the details in their trials and tribulations and concentrate on the broad features of the raw deal served to them by the state for seven decades.

Pakistan had a few industrial units at the time of independence and obviously a small force of industrial labour that was concentrated in Lahore and Rohri. There were also some craft unions such as those of shoe-makers and tonga drivers. These unions were affiliated to the left-leaning All India Trade Union Federation.

The state went after them from the very morrow of independence. Rival unions were encouraged in small enterprises and the bigger union, of railway workshop workers, was denied recognition and its leaders were detained for vagrancy, if no other charge could be concocted against them.

The benefit of labour reform and increase in wages announced on the eve of independence were denied to Pakistani workers and this led to the first major labour action in the country’s history -- a strike by the postal employees union, one of whose most prominent leaders in India was Mohammad Ali Jinnah and its Pakistan branch was led by Mirza Ibrahim and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. This action caused the labour some loss of public goodwill, as the nationalist sentiment was running high. The state was able to devote the first decade of independence to weaning the trade unions away from the left-inclined international organisation and forging their alliance with the pro-western confederation.

The Ayub regime gave high priority to reducing the space for organised labour. The Industrial Disputes Ordinance of 1959 drastically curtailed labour rights. The Trade Union Act of 1926 was incorporated into the ordinance with critical amendments, the workers’ right to strike was virtually abolished, and the emphasis shifted from labour’s rights to the employer-friendly phrase "Industrial disputes".

Further, craft unions were prohibited, federations were discouraged, and instead of an industrial unit having a single union its different sections were obliged to have separate unions. The Punjab Union of Journalists, for instance, was denied registration while this facility was allowed to unions in newspaper establishments. This made collective bargaining impossible.

Although Ayub’s labour minister, Gen. Burki, once threatened to give electric shocks to employers who did not provide housing to their workers, all the shocks were reserved for labour and the promise of housing for them was soon forgotten.

The Ayub regime’s policy of helping 22 families get richer and richer generated the first and so far the only labour-led movement for political change. This obliged the Yahya regime, especially Nur Khan, the West Pakistan Martial Law Administrator, to offer some concessions to labour through the Industrial Relations Ordinance of 1969 and otherwise too.

The post-1971 government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto added some more concessions, such as labour’s say in management, old age pension, etc but it also broke the back of the trade union movement through brutal use of force. This led to labour’s alienation not only from the PPP but also from politics itself and the veterans of labour movement fell back on the puerile position that they did not care who the rulers, democrats or dictators were. They were only concerned about their economic rights, a position that had considerably weakened their movement.

Throughout these decades, the colonial policy of encouraging tripartite conferences in which the state acted as the mediator between the conflicting narratives of employers and employees was retained, at least formally. The credit for undermining this system went to Gen. Ziaul Haq. He defended the employers’ unfettered right of hire and fire and abandoned the annual tripartite conference and the practice of framing a labour policy each year. A labour-friendly development in that period, however, was the Supreme Court’s inquiry into bonded labour in the brick kiln industry (the Darshan Masih case, 1988) and its decision to ban the practice of making advance payments to workers against wages that laid the foundations of their bondage.

The governments that succeeded the Ziaul Haq regime had other priorities than redressing labour’s grievances, The first Benazir Bhutto government (1988-1990) showed some interest in reviving the practice of issuing a labour policy despite abandoning the slogan of socialism as its economy, and allowed one of its prominent senators to move a Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Bill as a private member’s initiative.

The first Nawaz Sharif government (1990-1993) adopted the bill on bonded labour and it became law. It also enacted a law on the employment of children though it was not much of an improvement on the earlier legislation adopted in the 1930s.

Thanks to his forward looking labour minister, Gen. Musharraf offered labour a few concessions. A programme to eradicate bonded labour was adopted and the practice of labour-employer consultation was revived. Besides, labour seats were provided in local bodies.

During the post-Musharraf period labour has been fighting against thoughtless privatisation of public sector assets. The organised workforce has shrunk to one per cent of the total labour force, the informal sector has grown larger than the formal one, and some of the problems created by the devolution of the labour subject to the provinces under the 18th Amendment of 2010 are pending resolution.

The few redeeming features during the past few years include the trade unions’ tenacious struggle to protect their rights, the rise of a large and strong organisation of home-based workers, greater awareness among women workers of their rights and their unionisation, and the lead taken by the Sindh government in adopting a comprehensive, though ambitious, labour policy. But now the principle of continuity of policies regardless of change of government has become debatable.

The way the state has neglected its obligations to respect labour rights under the GSP-Plus agreement with the European Union also reveals its indifference towards promoting labour rights. The 27 international conventions Pakistan is required to comply with under this agreement include eight ILO Conventions. These are conventions on the minimum age for employment, on the elimination of the worst forms of child labour, abolition of forced labour, on forced compulsory labour, on women’s right to equal wage for equal work, on discrimination in employment, on freedom of association and right to organise unions, and on the labour’s right to collective bargaining.

Despite labourers’ repeated offers to play their due role in ensuring compliance with GSP-Plus conditions and despite the realisation in the government of the benefits of the accord with the European Union, the lack of interest in giving the workers their due can only be regretted as a monumental folly, for which the entire nation will have to pay a prohibitive price.