Pakistan Industrial And Commercial Employment Ordinance 1968

[Lorrine Hatala]

TheIndustrial and Commercial Employment (St anding Orders) Ordinance, 1968 regulate the conditions of employment of workmen in industrial and commercial establishment wherein twenty (20) or more workmen are employed, directly or through any other person, whether on behalf of himself or any other person, or were so employed on any day during the preceding twelve months.

Khalid Zafar Graduated in commerce from Hailey College of Commerce, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan and obtained his law degree from University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. He has a diversified experience of over 21 years as a litigator and corporate lawyer and has worked with leading law firms including Cornelius, Lane & Mufti; Mandviwalla & Zafar; Surridge & Beecheno; and Hassan & Hassan in the years 1999 through 2012.

Ms. Aleena Waheed Hashmi obtained her graduation in Law from Punjab University Law College, Lahore and later pursued her Masters in Social Work. Ms. Waheed holds practicing license of Punjab Bar Association. The area of expertise is corporate, banking, commercial and transactional practice. Aleena is advising and providing legal services to the clients of her law firm and represents her law firm in all sorts of commercial, corporate and banking matters. Ms. Waheed has an ability and extensive experience of drafting more complex documents like persuasive briefs and motions that require comprehension of complicated fact patterns, analysis of numerous legal issues or questions of law and review of voluminous transcripts and records. With such a broad understanding of law, she has been able to better assist every client with her variety of activities.

Hamza graduated from Punjab University Law College (PULC) and also holds a Masters degree in Political Science. He is a practicing member of Punjab Bar Association. He handles all the civil, banking and commercial litigation of the firm. Hamza has expertise in revenue and land matters and has been doing land records due diligence. He is handling the corporate matter like Intellectual Property Rights, registration of limited liability companies, partnership matters, trademarks and copyrights etc. Hamza is handling the transactional banking matters including but not limited to property opinions, structuring and execution of the transactions. He has legal acumen and skills for solving various kinds of legal propositions and issues successfully.

Five years earlier, on September 12, 2012, Pakistan witnessed the worst industrial disaster in its history when a fire at the Ali Enterprises garment factory in Karachi killed at least 255 workers and injured more than 100. Investigations found a series of irregularities and an almost complete absence of fire and safety mechanisms. According to surviving workers, the management made no immediate efforts to rescue the workers and instead attempted to save their merchandise first.

The fatal fire at Ali Enterprises, which was primarily supplying to KiK Textillien, a German brand, also highlighted serious defects in the auditing and certification process. A certificate was issued to the factory by RINA Services S.p.A, an Italian inspection company, just 22 days before the deadly fire, finding that the factory complied with all the necessary fire and safety mechanisms and labor laws. RINA, the auditing company, had issued similar certificates to over 100 factories in the country.

While the scope of the research is limited given the vast scale of the apparel industry in Pakistan, it nonetheless points to a trend of widespread poor working conditions, identifies key concerns voiced by workers and labor rights advocates, and details the failure of inspection mechanisms to enforce compliance with applicable labor laws and regulations.

While most factories cater to the domestic market, some make garments for well-known United States and European retail companies. The larger factories are part of the organized sector of the industry and supply international apparel brands. The bulk of the manufacturing, however, takes place in the informal economy, operating in small, unregistered shops, and unmarked buildings. These small factories produce for domestic brands, both registered and unregistered.

The working conditions in smaller factories are usually worse than those in larger ones that are more likely to be inspected, particularly if supplying to international brands. Owners of the smaller factories are more likely to refuse to pay the statutory minimum wage and use short-term oral contracts. However, Human Rights Watch found violations of labor rights including forced overtime, denial of leave, and short-term unwritten contracts even in large Pakistani factories.

Workers, many of them women, told Human Rights Watch that they experience physical as well as verbal abuse, sometimes of a sexual nature, as well as forced overtime, denial of paid maternity leave, medical leave, and failure to pay the statutory minimum wages. Workers also said they faced pressure not to take toilet breaks, and some said they were denied clean drinking water. A worker from a Karachi factory said:

Some of the smaller factories sometimes employ children, including as young as 13, to avoid paying minimum wage and overtime. Human Rights Watch spoke to nine children working in garment factories, all of them producing for the domestic market. None of the children had a written contract. The management can avoid giving them an employment contract or other benefits because workers under the age of 18 do not have a national identification card (NIC), which is often used as a pretext for denying official wages. Children sometimes accompany their parents, in most cases the mother, to the factory, and end up working without a formal contract. Wahab, 17, from Karachi who has been working since age 14 said:

Human Rights Watch spoke with 23 women in Lahore and Karachi engaged in seasonal home-based work for garment factories in surrounding areas. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), home-based workers in Pakistan produce primarily for the domestic market. The women whom Human Rights Watch interviewed did not know the name of the contracting factory, let alone the brand for which they were producing. Instead, middlemen employ the women mostly to trim extra thread from stitched garments, embroider, make button holes, or package garments into plastic bags. One woman, a home-based garment worker for the past 20 years, told Human Rights Watch:

Labor rights activists complained of union-busting by many large factories. Factory managers often keep workers on short-term contracts to discourage their participation in union activities, refusing to give them permanent status despite years of employment, dismissing or harassing union representatives to prevent them from forming independent unions, and encouraging pro-management unions.

For example, on July 6, 2010, unknown gunmen shot and killed prominent labor leader Mustansar Randhawa and his brother in the Faisalabad district of the Punjab. Randhawa was a leader of the Labor Qaumi Movement (LQM), a labor union seeking to organize workers of the textile and power loom sector in the industrial district. He was killed soon after he announced a strike to demand a wage hike. Workers protested his killing, and demanded increased wages. Police used force against the protesters, several of whom were injured, and arrested more than 100. Subsequently, six leaders of the LQM were arrested and charged under the anti-terrorism law for allegedly attempting to burn down a factory during the strike. In November 2011, an anti-terrorism court sentenced the six trade union leaders to life imprisonment.

In December 2017, labor rights activists told Human Rights Watch that they were facing threats from security agencies for exposing abuses and campaigning for compliance with labor laws. According to many union leaders, the factory owners often try and bribe workers to back down from demands. One union leader told Human Rights Watch:

Workers in some of these factories also have complained of exploitative labor conditions. For example, workers in one factory in Hafizabad district supplying international brands told Human Rights Watch that the factory management has attempted to intimidate and harass workers associated with independent unions. In response to a letter from Human Rights Watch, the factory said that the management encourages all workers to join unions and has never used illegal means to prevent workers from doing so. The factory management also provided the details of the three registered unions in the factory. Workers denied these claims, saying that the factory management obstructs attempts to register independent unions and threatens union members with involuntary dismissals.

Factory owners also need to commit to reform. There is much more the government, the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) and the Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PRGMEA) can do to ensure compliance with worker protection provisions, and to sanction companies that abuse worker rights. However, many factory owners carry considerable political clout in Pakistan, which affects the extent to which they are held to account for violating workplace rights, and health and safety provisions.

Human Rights Watch conducted most of the field research for this report in Pakistan from June 2017 to December 2018. Interviews were conducted in Lahore city and Hafizabad district in Punjab province and Karachi city in Sindh province as these areas have many garment factories.

Given the vast scale of the apparel industry in Pakistan, the scope of the research cannot be comprehensive, but it indicates the trend of poor working conditions and identifies key concerns voiced by workers and labor rights advocates.

We interviewed 112 factory workers, including 22 women and 9 children under age 18, the legal minimum age of work in Pakistan. Of the 24 garment factories examined, workers estimated that 16 employed between 300 and 5,000 workers. The smallest factory we researched employed about 70 workers. In addition, we also interviewed 23 women who were home-based garment workers. Among those interviewed there were 37 workers from 17 factories involved in efforts to form trade unions.

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