LAHORE, Jan 15: All the federal and provincial employees, both officers and subordinate staff across the country, working in government departments and corporations established under an act of parliament, have been left with no judicial forum to agitate their grievances in service matters.

Amendments made to different labour laws and judicial bodies since 1997 have virtually banned trade union activities and substantially curtailed the jurisdiction of labour courts, provincial labour appellate tribunals, National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC) and other such forums.

As a result, private and public employees and workmen have been left with almost no remedy in case of dispute with the management. Similarly, the changes in laws have hit trade union activities.

They were barred from approaching the Federal Service Tribunal after the Service Tribunal Act of 1973 was amended on June 10, 1997, to insert sections 2(a) and 2-A to define a civil servant afresh. The new law enunciated that service under an authority, corporation, body or organisation established by a federal law or owned or controlled by the federal government or in which the federal government has interests, is declared as service of Pakistan and those holding posts in such departments shall be civil servants.

However, the Industrial Relations Ordinance (IRO), 2002, ordained that the employees in federal and provincial service shall not be entitled to agitate labour courts to get their service disputes settled. The new IRO also removed the employees of the Pakistan Railways, Wapda and other public corporations from the labour courts judicial review.

As a result, the employees working with statutory federal and provincial departments and corporations are no more entitled to move the Federal Service Tribunal and labour courts.

The situation has also been clarified by superior courts which have held that only the employees of offices established under the constitution are civil servants and they alone are entitled to constitutional protection. Such offices include the president’s and the prime minister’s secretariats, establishments working under provincial governors and chief ministers and the Supreme Court and high courts.

Such a decision was given by a Supreme Court bench, comprising then Chief Justice A R Cornelius and Justice Hamoodur Rehman, on March 31, 1964, in a petition for leave to appeal filed by a PIA employee against the decision of the Sindh High Court which refused to entertain his writ petition against his removal from his office. The judgment (reported in 1971 SCMR 568) said that the writ petition was not maintainable because the petitioner was an employee of a corporation which was a statutory body and did not enjoy the protection of the constitution (of 1956). The apex court did not grant the petitioner leave to appeal with the observation that the petitioner was not a member of a central or provincial All-Pakistan Service which alone was the public service.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of these employees moved the provincial high courts throughout the country in writ petitions against the orders of the labour courts which rejected their petitions on the ground that the IRO 2002 did not entitle them to agitate their disputes with those courts. The high courts have also raised the question of the writ petitions in the light of the Supreme Court observations in the decision announced in March 1964. The high courts have during the proceedings held that they are not entitled to agitate their grievances through writ petitions as they do not enjoy the constitutional protection.

LABOUR LAWS: The industrial workers and officers enjoyed legislative and judicial protection under the laws enacted in 1973, the year which saw a number of pro-labour laws being enacted. All government officers were entitled to move the Federal Service Tribunal without discrimination and the subordinate staff was provided with the right to agitate their disputes with labour courts.