Why no social security?
THERE was a time when it was widely believed that Karachi’s roads were paved with gold. Anyone who came here could make a fortune — even if it was a small one.
This may have been true to an extent when the pace of industrialisation was fast and urbanisation slow. The trickle of labour from the countryside was easily absorbed into the formal employment sector.
The situation has now changed totally. This stark reality emerged painfully at a conference held earlier this month in Karachi. Jointly organised by the Pakistan Study Centre and Piler (Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research), the event was designed to commemorate three decades of Piler’s fine work for the rights of labour.
The institute has toiled for (in its own words) labour education, training and research; organisation and mobilisation of workers; research and publications; advocacy and networking; and facilitating gender equality.
Today, in the age of globalisation when capitalism rules the roost, whatever had been achieved earlier, especially in terms of social security, has been dissipated.
Security means that one should feel protected — especially with respect to some basic rights such as health, education, shelter and employment. Can you expect a man to be optimally productive if he is nagged by anxiety all the time?
Will he be able to provide the next meal to his family? If his child falls ill will he be able to get him treated? Can he educate his children? When he goes to work the next day will he be sacked?
All efforts made by Piler and other organisations have failed to prevent further weakening of the feeble social security net and has made the situation critical. The growth of unbridled capitalism in a globalised world has worked against the workers’ interest.
Two reports by PILER, Expanding Informality and Diminishing Wages (2011) and Declining Decent Work & Emerging Struggles (2010) sum up the crisis powerfully in their titles. In simple words, the capitalist now has the upper hand, and labour which is the most essential component of the production process, is being forced to take a backseat.
As a result, contract work with no job security and measly remuneration is on the increase and the informal sector which keeps workers in isolation and does not allow them to organise themselves to fight for their rights is steadily expanding.
At the conference, the keynote speaker, Prof Jan Breman of the University of Amsterdam, gave an excellent analysis of the phenomena of labour and poverty in which he neatly weaved in the impact of migration on the labour market. According to him, “We are in the midst of a civilisational shift which marks the end of a long epoch of mankind dominated by peasant economies and peasant societies. Today, people are not only being driven out of agriculture … but are also being forced to leave their rural habitat in search of better livelihood elsewhere”. These people have become “footloose” on a massive scale.
Comparing this trend with the 19th-century transformation of European societies by the movement of labour from agrarian-rural to urban-industrial in a colonial nation-state setting, Breman pointed out how the difference in the pattern of migration in South Asia has placed workers at a disadvantage.
In our region, migration is no longer a one-time movement but an on-going circulation. That means workers do not settle in their place of work. Sometimes they come to take up jobs but leave their families behind and are constantly mobile.
As they put in long working hours and live in difficult conditions, they become, what Breman terms “non-labouring poor” — those who become worn out and disabled with age and ill health quite early in life, age 40. Without any old-age pension plan or social security cover to fall back on, they are consigned to the worst form of poverty.
Breman describes them as paupers, or the poor who have given up the struggle to cope. They cannot depend on their children who do not have the capacity to support their parents as well as their own families. Hence the assumption that in the east the close family network supports the elderly is utterly misplaced.
This comes as an eye-opener. Breman is of the view that the growth of industrialisation in Europe made labour a scarce commodity forcing the capitalists to grant labour rights which “made work and life in the urban economy more decent and dignified”. This meant higher wages, regulated work hours and better working conditions.
One major advantage that European labour of the 19th century enjoyed was that of education. By the end of the 19th century, literacy rates in Europe and America had touched 90 per cent.
On the contrary labour in South Asia was not provided education in a big way — neither under the British Raj nor under the post-colonial governments. Pakistan is the worst-off and a majority remains illiterate. Moreover, the slow industrial development did not create the demand for labour to give it bargaining power. Contrary to the trend in Europe, labour in South Asia has moved from the formal to the informal sector which has weakened unionisation and allowed the worst kind of exploitation.
What surprises Prof Breman is that the problems of labour are not on the agenda of public discourse here. He insists that social security should be the entitlement of the worker, especially the non-labouring poor. Will any conscience be stirred by his statement, “The moral status of a society is determined by how it handles its poor”?
how about just plain security?Social security appears to be a far cry when the said worker is unable to leave his home in safety to earn the next meal, or even to stay at home safely bewailing the lack of that meal. The people are fighting for security when they should be working for it.But at present the only way they appear to get anything is by lashing out. No power? Riot. The next few days there is less loadshedding. Not enough pay? Strike.
It has been proven worldwide that a large private sector is a necessity to have a highly productive economy. Capitalism, i am afraid, is a necessary evil in that respect. However, we don’t have to have the cut-throat and greedy capitalism as practiced in USA but more humane one currently in practice in most European countries. A kind of socialist capitalism.
I strongly believe in the principle of supply and demand. What the governments can do is to create demand for the labour by creating opportunities for economic activity and the private sector would be forced to pay heed to the demand of the labour. On top of this there could be some checks and balances placed on the private sector so that its greed does not get out of hand to the detriment of the labour and the overall economy.
The old Unionism is anachronistic in this day and age. The union movement in the west is currently going through extensive soul searching and trying to charter its course through the new economic realities. Lessons learnt elsewhere should be relevant to the current debate in Pakistan.
much more eficient in improving the econmomy
You are talking about social security, while the government does not have enough money to provide for the electricity for the industry.
i do not understand, why everybody is talking about rights but not duties, I with an experience of 35 years in private sector and abroad, sorry to note, our labour force is least efficient in the world, some times 1/20 to European standard, (this I am saying of Private sector, imagine of Government sector)
If Pakistan wants unions people must fight for them. Physically fight for them. Once they have labor unions people must fight to keep them. No one is going to give them to you except labor organizers, those ready to risk their skins. A factory can close it's doors and hire cheaper labor. So the legislation needed are "right to organize laws" allowing workers to vote for a union and have one.
People's social security now is to produce more sons, and maybe one will get lucky and become rich.
The idea of labor unions was applied in 1970s but it resulted nearly stalemate in industrial development. Labor unions were so badly exploited by the interest groups that most of the industrial owners wound up productive units and shifted their capital to safer places. That capital never came back and we were left with Labor unions only. Social security is a comprehensive process involving all stakeholders and safeguarding the rights of each side.
" Don't ask for rights – ya take 'em. Any right that's given ta ya free o charge must have some tin wrong with it."
Mr. Dooley
The problem is very simple. It started soon after the independence of our country, which resulted in mass exodus of people. With no functional govt., all these people were settled in urban Sindh. Against this, the Indian Govt, handled the issue systematically by keeping them in concentration camps and subsequently distributing them to all over Indian cities. At political level, Pakistan did not witness stability, and soon it was taken over by military. They also patronized inter migration domestically with nefarious designs to control the city. The city inflated beyond its resources, the mixture of population gave birth to innumerable problems, social, economic and political. These problems can be tackled only with strong application of rule of law, and also developing an alternative city in Gawadar Balochistan, which has a port facility and can generate income and employment.
", the Indian Govt, handled the issue systematically by keeping them in concentration camps and subsequently distributing them to all over Indian cities."
Absolutely wrong. Most of the Hindus and Sikhs coming from the Pakistani side were/are settled in Punjab (modern day Haryana and Punjab) and Delhi. Not any further.
By the way, concentration camps are used to hold prisoners of war. It is wrong to label temporary shelters for displaced citizens as 'concentration camps.
Let me tell you the truth. The migration of non-muslims (sikhs & hindus) from Pakistani Punjab to Indian Punjab, was simply viewed as dislocation, since the people at both sides or border, were of same language and ethnic origin, whereas the people, whose number ran into hundreds of thousands, migrated from UP, Hyderabad and other areas of India, were totally a separate people with their own language, and when all these people were settled in Sindh, it totally changed the demography of urban Sindh. As a result, large cities like Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur were amazingly filled with people, who were alien in majority, and retained their own language and culture. Our point is that, Pakistan had four units, therefore, all these immigrants should have been settled all over the country. The problems of ethnic riots in Karachi could have been averted, had the right decision been taken at right time.
this article is an eye opener for pakistani authorities. i am not convinced that they will take immediate measures to provide social security that is the fundamental right of the people. however, i am convinced that we cannot be a civilized and progressing society untill we take care of the negelected people.
we need a simple legislation our labour laws are very complicated.moreover mostly our legistator are running the industries they donot want educated labour for their own interest.
Here we need humane industrialist and Legislator but the task is very tough. Civil societies have to come forward and promote the labour cause
thank you for writing on such an important topic.