provincial governments did not do legislation to set minimum working standards for labourers under the 18th Amendment.
The Amendment did also not address the question of registering the national level trade unions. And Employees Old-Age Benefits Institution EOBI, and Workers Welfare Fund were yet national level organisations.
“The number of employees registered with EOBI is mere five percent of the total in the country… this is unsatisfactory,” he said.
He said new registrations for unions were very low. More importantly, the membership of workers in their respective unions was drastically low. “On an average, mere one out of 100 employees is a member of a union,” he said.
Liaquat Ali Sahi, secretary general of Democratic Workers Federation of State Bank of Pakistan (CBA), said the objective of outsourcing employees at many organisations was to deny basic rights to them. “Majority of the outsourced employees do not get the minimum fixed wage of Rs12,000/month, while they work for 12 hours a day against the defined eight-hour,” he said.
The state was not playing its role in getting implemented the Industrial Relations Act, which allows trade union activities at their respective organisations. “Trade activities are not allowed at many organisations, including Pakistan Railways, and industrial units, and many banks,” he said.
The government does not take onboard representatives of elected unions (Collected Bargaining Agents) in the process of privatisation of state-owned entities in most of the cases. The representation may help employees to remain unaffected from the sell-off of the entities. “Non-inclusions of representatives on the board create uncertainty among employees,” he said.
He said charter of demand of almost all the political parties in the country lack the sections which talks about betterment of labourers, labour laws, and their social and welfare rights. “This is the reason for which labourers do not have voice in the national and provincial parliaments,” he said.