Minister of State for Finance Saleem Mandviwalla confirmed on January 23 that murder charges against the owners of the Baldia Town factory that caught fire on September 11 last year had been withdrawn. The investigation officer was also changed.
On January 24, there was no general strike. The apparent silence of the working class was a result of the systematic targeting of unions by the state apparatus.
With over 259 workers killed in the fire, the final death toll is still unavailable.
The initiators of the drop-in-charges was apparently the Sindh Governor Ishratul Abad, known to be chief among those supporting the Karachi Electric Supply Company’s draconian steps against striking workers in 2011, and Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf.
No such intervention occurred when six power loom workers in Faisalabad were sentenced to 99 years in prison each in October 2010 under the Anti-Terrorism Law sections. The six were jailed for allegedly burning down a factory during a protest seeking the implementation of a minimum wage notification.
With such anti-worker measures being vetted out in the open, it is not difficult for one watching mainstream media to recognise that Karl Marx’s idea that the state is “an instrument of bourgeoisie economic interest” applies to the Pakistani state. However, this is something those who struggle with unions and workers encounter every day.
The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (KCCI) ability to leverage the prime minister is not an anomaly. The fact that factory inspections had been banned in Pakistan since 2003 should be taken as an indicator for anyone wanting a glimpse of the power of the industrialist class on the state.
But it is the tactics that factory owners use in collaboration with factory area police that are the most brutal. Any worker caught speaking to other workers about forming a union or striking is fired. The practice is almost universal in the private sector.
If workers manage to covertly register a union, factory owners fire the union leadership and get fake criminal cases registered against them, which range from stealing bricks to being loan sharks. The situation is being faced by wood cutter, textile worker and carpet worker union organisers in Lahore.
Textile workers across the board report that no safety precautions are followed at their factories -- except when the inspectors come. Inspections, of course, are not by the Labour Department -- but rather subcontractors hired by SA8000 or ISO 9000 who inform factory owners before coming.
“The medical cabinets are stocked up and gates and windows opened the day the inspector is due," a worker at a textile factory near Youhanabad told me "We are instructed to tell them that everything is fine.”
He refused to do so. A month later, he was fired. The factory owner explained the reason for locking up and shutting windows as “workers are known for stealing some of the materials they are working with”. The factory, however, received the certification as expected.
It is a joke on the lives of the workers who have died in numerous factory fires over the past two years; including the Orient factory fire in Lahore, to suggest that the fires are "accidental". The fact that no basic safety regulations are followed, organised labour is targeted, factory inspectors are paid off and key government officials come to the defence of any factory owners found violating rules.
Even so-called premier institutions are not free of the malaise. The Lahore University of Management Sciences only recently fired 18 of its 104 strong janitorial staff for demanding that they be paid the minimum wage. The varsity administration used the loophole of claiming the janitors were ‘subcontracted’ labour to divest itself of the responsibility for either paying the workers below minimum wage or firing them despite the subcontractor claiming to the contrary.
Subcontracted labour has, of course, made it more difficult to organise labour. Subcontracted labourers tend to be brought in from far off districts and are provided few of the rights that are available to formal workers under industrial relations laws. Textile factories are known for contracting over 80 percent of their workforce while maintaining a small stock of permanent employees to “fill up the paperwork”.
Murder, there should be no doubt, is premeditated by the industrial class. Perhaps, this was the reason why Pakistan People's Party Senator Raza Rabbani walked out of the Senate in protest after Ashraf’s interference in the Baldia Town fire case came to light.
Public cries of “getting away with murder” have been responded to directly by the KCCI with a statement saying that it believes Section 302 (premediated murder) should not be applied to such a case. It asks: “In which country [do] they apply charges of murder when an accident occurs? Where is the law applied differently on different segments of society in the same case?”
It then drags religion into it: “Being an Islamic country and being Muslims have we considered we will die one day and are answerable to Allah?” This concluding sentence is tantamount to saying: Let industrialists be given a "license to kill" and blame the deaths on Almighty.
May one not ask: how is it not premeditated murder if one blocks all exits and keeps hundreds of workers in a building known to be a fire hazard?
May one not ask: in which country are anti-terrorism charges applied on striking workers?
May one not ask: if all humans are equal, why are some (industrialists) exonerated from legitimate charges, while others (workers) convicted under false charges in Pakistan?
If our prime minister is so driven by a sense of injustice against factory owners responsible for the death of 300 workers, why does he not intervene to exonerate the six power loom workers in Faisalabad, each serving the third year of his 99-year jail sentence? Or why did the Sindh Governor not intervene when KESC workers were being booked under anti-terrorism charges?
The KCCI is correct in principle: there is one law in Pakistan for one segment of society, and another law for another. Only that the government subsequently made it clear: industrialists are on the good side, the blue eyed darling of the law.
In such a situation where industrialists whose factories burn down are not murderers and workers are declared terrorists, one can only raise the age old slogan: “Workers of Pakistan unite!"
[Hashim bin Rashid is the general secretary of the Lahore branch of the for the Awami Workers Party. This article is reprinted from Pakistan Today.]
