Beware the predator

All Lily Ledbetter wanted was to be treated fairly by her employer.

Ledbetter joined Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co in 1979 as a supervisor. After 19 years of working for the company, she received an anonymous letter detailing how she was paid less than her male colleagues in the same position. The disparity was significant. Ledbetter was making thousands of dollars less than her male counterparts. Ledbetter filed a case against Goodyear alleging discrimination on the basis of her gender. While the facts showed a clear case of discrimination. Ledbetter’s case was tossed out by the Supreme Court of the United States on a technicality (she had not filed her claim within the 180-day limitation period prescribed by law).

Ledbetter lost the battle but won the war. In 2009, the United States Congress passed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, reversing the ruling of the Supreme Court. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has a framed copy of the law in her chambers.

Ledbetter’s case is a reminder to us all that combating injustice in the private sphere is just as important as combating injustice in the public sphere.

The fight against autocrats is nothing new for the people of Pakistan. That fight has consumed this nation for the better part of its existence. That fight still continues and needs to now also direct its attention towards the autocrats that rule major companies and businesses. Who discriminate, silence and humiliate employees without any fear of repercussion.

Now of course workers do have some basic rights in Pakistan. The Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender if you work for the government. Attempts were made to address the gender disparity in the workplace by certain provincial legislation such as the Punjab Fair Representation of Women Act, 2014. Workers have a right to be paid for their work, and recently we’ve been able to give them the right to be free from acts of sexual discrimination. We can commend such moves without losing sight of the fact that exploitation can occur against employees in the private sector in an almost unrestricted manner.

Simple concepts that would uphold the dignity of workers are not found in our domestic legislation. There are barely any effective laws restricting unfair termination in Pakistan. In the limited circumstances that certain categories of workers are given the right to sue for unfair termination, it is almost impossible to get an effective remedy through our court system. By the time a worker’s case is decided, decades may have passed. Given these circumstances, employers rule over their kingdoms. Hiring and firing at will. As an employee you can speak up, only if you are willing to risk everything. There is nothing that prevents an employer in the private sector from firing an employee for actions completely unrelated to their work. You could be fired for looking at them wrong.

A worker’s freedom from unfair termination is the essence of his right. Right up there with the freedom to be paid a decent living wage. That simple freedom doesn’t exist in Pakistan apart from a few limited instances. It is completely up to the person you work for to treat you fairly. In an ideal world that would be great, if only living in such a world was an option for us.

Take the legal profession as an example. Most young lawyers work in firms or chambers where they don’t even have employment contracts. There is no obligation on their employer to pay them a living wage, or any wage at all. They can be fired for any reason that their employer can dream of. This can include something that has nothing to do with their job. Your employer wants to contest the local Bar Council elections? You better go around distributing his business cards all over the city or you might lose your job. And so, young lawyers become young lackeys. Expected to do the bidding of their employer right down to picking up the birthday cake for their kids.

These facts aren’t exaggerated instances. They are real events that I have seen occur in the legal profession. The list of exploitative practices could go on and on. They exist in industries as diverse as medicine, teaching, etc. No law exists to try to reconcile the power dynamics in the private sphere. We have nurtured a system where tyrants can run businesses with no avenue existing where people can call them out for exploitation.

To be sure, one response to everything I have said would be that nobody forces anyone to stay at an exploitative workplace. True. But that choice does not come so easy to workers who need a job to put food on the table. Unable to call out exploitation and discrimination because of threats of defamation suits and being harassed by their powerful bosses. The law is skewed in favour of the powerful. This shouldn’t be news to anyone in Pakistan. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t bear highlighting again and again.

Every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. It doesn’t matter whether they work in the private or the public sphere. The amount of rights given by the laws of Pakistan to employees working in the private sphere needs to increase. One simple step towards this could be to force employers to give ‘good cause’ before terminating an employee. Employers should not be able to terminate employees for spurious reasons. Placing the burden on the employer will at least bring some semblance of due process to the table.

That is a tiny step that can be taken, but even that will mean nothing unless we fix our court system. We cannot expect workers to spend thousands of rupees over a number of years just to get a court order saying that they were treated unfairly. For all the talk we make about people leaving Pakistan to work abroad, maybe we need to think about how we can create a less hostile work environment for our employees to actually want to stay here.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th, 2019.

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