The overworked and underpaid

Caught between a slurry of weekly celebrations watching the inflation go down and the very real purchasing power crisis where citizens struggle to make ends meet with continually rising food prices and energy costs, there is a severe disconnect between on-paper economic milestones and the living, breathing real world.
Naturally, what’s on paper has little to do with the daily drudges of manual workers and their silent resolve to make the most of insubstantial financial situations via a desperate gambit: working overtime.
Overtime is a simple concept; in Pakistan, the land of the lawless (more or less), there’s even some legislature to support and protect it. The rules are simple: work over the minimum daily hours for two times the usual pay; three times if it happens to be an official holiday.
These rules are stipulated in The Shops and Establishment Act, 1965, and The Factories Act, 1934, along with their various iterations and amendments over the years — including after the 18th Amendment was passed in 2010, when provinces decided to instil and regulate their own, very nearly identical labour laws. These laws refer to the ‘workmen’ category of labourers, loosely defined as any individual employed for manual labour, whether skilled, unskilled, clerical, or technical.
The two laws also clarify the maximum working hours skilled and unskilled employees are allowed to work, which is no more than nine hours a day and 48 hours a week (50 hours a week if the factory is a seasonal one). In all, the working hours, inclusive of meals and rest breaks, should amount to 12 hours a day.
Unfortunately, according to the International Labour Organisation’s statistics database, Pakistan is among the top 10 countries where a significant portion of workmen — around 40 per cent of employed labour — work over 49 hours a week; and that is just the registered formal sector.
How bad is the situation really? Since the informal sector data is out of reach, it’s hard to say; however, Advocate Chaudry Muhammad Ashraf Khan — a highly respected labour lawyer with an extensive career spanning over 25 years working in labour law and with trade unions — is of the opinion that workers, skilled and unskilled, would eagerly work well beyond the maximum stipulated hours.
“The economic condition of the country and the need for money are such that if you ask a worker to work 20 hours a day out of 24 and he’ll be paid double overtime, he’d be compelled to work.”
Even the law recognises workers would willingly run themselves into the ground to earn their keep, which is why both the Factories Act and the Shop Establishment Act include limits on maximum overtime hours allowed per year at 75 hours and 100 hours, respectively.
This comes as no surprise, given that short-term inflation fluctuated around an average 14pc year-on-year in October 2024, according to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics data, largely due to the high costs of perishable food items. Add to that the burden of high and continually rising electricity costs, and employees are left with little choice but to work themselves to the bone in order to bring in a few extra rupees, especially when the minimum monthly earnings of employees are as low as roughly Rs35,000 for unskilled workmen as per the Labour Force Survey 2022-23.
Furthermore, while the law is ‘set in stone’, compliance is a whole other issue.
Adv Khan explains that the rather small organised formal sector, many of which include multinational corporations in various industries, including pharmaceutical, petroleum, and chemical sectors, not only comply with overtime pay laws but even offer something closer to fair wages — generally unheard of in most developing countries. However, the majority of workmen that are employed in the sprawling informal sector are deprived of this protection.
A lack of understanding of the law, low incomes and education, and limited access to authoritative representatives leave this majority with little ability to amend the blatant disregard of their rights.
Ideally, Adv Khan explains, a workman employed in a small, cottage factory working overtime, going unpaid, and relegated to unsafe, unsanitary working environments could simply go to the authorities, who are bound to appoint someone from the government’s labour department to make a formal application on their behalf. However, there are several caveats to such an excursion.
First of all, “For getting a few rupees, there will be a sword hanging over your head of losing your job, which is why most people don’t look for help,” Adv Khan has found in his experience.
Second, there is a lack of protective institutions that actually cater to the workmen’s best interests. Chief among them: effective trade unions.
Although meant to create harmony between employers and a whole host of workmen in order to ensure a productive working environment, trade unions in Pakistan do little else but remain ineffective and dormant at the best of times or create discord in the worst; our own fault highlights Adv Khan. Disrespecting the very spirit of these unions and their ability to strengthen industries, they are seen as threatening and have therefore been actively discouraged as far back as the nationalisation era, although Zulifikar Ali Bhutto’s government wasn’t the only one to discourage trade unions.
Adv Khan elaborates, “None of the governments encouraged trade unions; even in the era of Ayub Khan, the trade unions were suppressed very badly in the name of industrialisation.” Now, most trade unions are bereft of corrupt entities.
Labour inspectors meant to implement the laws “change their cards like we change shoes,” and the workmen are left to fend for themselves.
With several years spent with the trade union movement of 1969, Adv Khan pins part of the blame on the intellectuals of the nation.
“Unions should have been encouraged by the political parties and the government. Unfortunately, here, attempts have never been made to unify the trade unions, only to bifurcate and dismantle them.”
That said, an economy like Pakistan’s is built on the backs of the very workmen the country continues to tread upon and ignore, pushing them to such extremes as working ungodly hours for a less than sufficient wage to be able to live a restless life. Some kind of respite must be sought after for their sake at the highest level.
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, November 11th, 2024