Held on Sunday 7th March 1999 at the office of Pakistan institute of Labour Education & Research (PILER)

1. What significant changes have you experienced in your workplace over the last 10 years?

Participants reported huge reduction of permanent employees in public as well as the private sector with the growing number of temporary/casual/subcontracted workforce. There is a marked increase in sub-contracting complete parts of production to small home industries or importing from other countries where these jobs are done on much lower costs. On one hand the managements are closing down units or laying off workers while on the other hand whole new badges of temporary worker are being hired.

The major downsizing has taken place in the public sector. More than 70% of the units that have been privatized were closed down by the owners their assets and machinery sold at much higher prices and the production sub-contracted to small home based units. There were incidents cited by the participants in which a brand name is still being sold in the market while factories have been shut down long time ago. There are also examples like cooking oil industries that were privatized and were completely shut down later on for they were sold to much lower than their actual value and the buyers sold the assets and machinery.

In the private sector smaller the units, the dirtier tricks are. There is no hiring of new permanent workers while the same temporary worker is not hired for more than 90 days in one year. Other than the temporary labour which consists of daily wagers and the monthly wagers appointed by a letter of probation period, there is a growing number of work force which works for an agency who contracts the factory in turn. The participants agreed that these agencies are either owned by the companies or have their favorite management employees own it.

The areas where subcontracting and temporary work force is extremely prevalent are maintenance, cleaning, packaging, canteen etc. Also the majority of this work force consists of younger and especially female workers. A temporary worker hired for a plumbing job often ends up doing all other maintenance work too.

A lot of incentive based industrial zones were created during the last ten years in which better salaries were offered and huge numbers of workers left their old secure jobs to work there. But as soon as the period of incentives was over, these industries were completely shut down leaving their workers jobless.

Another target of the cost-cutting policies on the part of the management is wage reduction, which is being increasingly used to bargain. The logic behind it is the competitive market and reduction in prices, while the participants invariably noted that they never experienced any reduction in the prices in market place.

2. How have these changes affected workers and trade unions?

We have already mentioned about the job losses, insecurity of tenure and decreasing benefits for workers. The non-permanent worker in any of the above mentioned form does not enjoy any benefits and has to do forced overtime. The permanent workers feel threatened by the hard work that the temporary workers have to put up to save their job. The conflict helps the management in every way leaving the workers completely divided and weakening the unions. An incident was cited where at the multinational Siemen, the trade union refused to take up or address the issues of the welfare of temporary workers. In addition Often the units of a large scale industry are divided into independent factories in order to weaken the unions and also deprive the workers of the benefits that a large scale industry is legally bound to provide. Also increasingly the Industrial Relation Managers have started directly dealing with the worker’s problems. The membership of TUs has been completely eroded in these years.

3. What do you think has caused these changes?

There were many views among the participants on this question.

The workers of smaller or medium sized units and the informal sector where they have to work very long hours blame it on the politicians. While others agreed that it was because of the globalization and SAP. There is more legal insecurity setting in as the government is accepting whatever the IMF and the World Bank demand.

The workers are blackmailed easily for they fear the closure of a unit where the costs have to be cut to compete in the market. The growth of a huge informal sector with unorganized labour was also considered as a major reason for the insecurity among the workers.

4. What questions do you have for workers in other countries about changes in their work place?

1. Do you have experienced similar changes in the last ten years?
2. Did you have any examples in which workers were successfully able to fight back during these changes?

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