Eighty-eight factory workers fired for ‘demanding rights’

Factory management dismisses claims, says no one has been fired

KARACHI: With the cold winds of Karachi's winter expected to set in soon, Abdul Jabbar thought of buying warm clothes for his newborn daughter. He was waiting for the pay day before he went to make the purchase. Times had been tough and he was struggling to make ends meet.

One day, he and his colleagues decided to talk to the management of the factory they worked at to pay them on time. They approached the management with high hopes but were instead told they were not welcome at the factory anymore.

This happened with 88 workers of the Denim Clothing Company (DCC) — a factory that manufactures clothes for international brands such as H&M and Primark — in the last week of November. According to the workers, they were sacked for demanding their rights.

"Fed up with no social security, no insurance, no medical facilities and low salaries that came on no specific date, we [the workers] decided to take up our concerns before the management," Jabbar told The Express Tribune.

On November 26, a meeting was held among the workers in which they chose five representatives to hold talks with the management. At noon, the team went to the manager's chamber. They never returned to their stations. They had been fired on the spot.

"The other workers decided to stand up for their colleagues. Thus in a cluster of 83, they knocked on the management's door again, demanding the reinstatement of their five fellows," he described.

They, however, met the same fate and were told to leave the factory immediately and not come back.

Eighty-three workers, who had been working at the factory for different time periods ranging from one year to a decade, were sacked within two hours and that too, without any prior notice.

"We are jobless since then and have nothing to do but regret our fate because we are mere labourers," decried Jabbar as he took part in a protest against their sacking outside the Karachi Press Club on Sunday.

According to a labour leader, Nasir Mansoor, an employer cannot fire an employee unless there is a charge sheet again the person. In this case, no such protocol was followed, he said, adding that this was done in violation of the law. "The sacked workers are going to hold a meeting with the IndustriAll Global Union, which has an agreement with the buying agents of the DCC to ensure labour rights," said Mansoor.

According to the protesting workers, more than 1,300 workers were employed at the factory to work in two shifts. But none of them had a contract signed with the company, one of the protesters said, adding that even the salaries were below the minimum wage level decided by the government.

For his part, the factory’s administration manager, Muhammad Tariq, claimed that they had not fired any one. He added, however, that they had issued show-cause notices to Abdul Jabbar and 10 others, asking them to present themselves before the administration and face an inquiry. Tariq claimed that Jabbar used to take extortion money from the workers, for which they have evidence.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 7^th,  2015.