KARACHI: Workers slam bank’s ‘anti-labour policies’
Speaking at a large demonstration organised by the MCB Staff Union on I.I. Chundrigar Road, which disrupted traffic for more than two hours, they warned the bank management that if the termination letters of the union leaders and other workers were not withdrawn by Tuesday, the workers would stage demonstrations at all the branches of the bank in the city.
Senator Safdar Abbasi said all the workers and union leaders should be reinstated immediately and the workers should be allowed to participate in healthy trade union activities so that they could protect their rights.
He said the bank management had adopted various anti-worker policies during the past many years and the organisation that was earning billions of rupees in profit was exploiting poor workers, who earned hardly a few thousand rupees a month.
He said the times had changed and with a worker-friendly party in government, the management would not be allowed to exploit the employees.
Earlier, Pakistan People’s Party Karachi chief Faisal Abidi asked the bank management to stop exploiting and harassing the workers and pay them their due share in the billions of rupees that the bank earned as profit.
He said that rather than sacking workers, the bank, which was expanding, should increase its workforce to reduce the burden on the existing employees.
He said the government was determined to abolish all anti-worker laws and if any organisation did not give its workers their rights, the government would ensure that the workers got their due rights.
The union’s patron, Saeed Ghani, said the workers were peaceful people and did not want to create a law and order situation and Thursday’s demonstration was also organised when the bank management refused to listen to their grievances and even threatened to terminate numerous workers and union office-bearers.
He said the union was ready to talk but it would talk with the management and not with other people on its behalf.
He alleged that members of an ethnic organisation and some government officials of the law enforcement agency had approached the union for talks, but he had refused, telling them that the union would only talk with the management.
He said the union wanted to resolve the issue through dialogue and for that, first the management had to withdraw the termination letters of workers and union officials.
He said that though the workers believed in peaceful negotiations, if the management tried to use strong-arm tactics, the workers were prepared to face that also.
Senior labour leader Habibuddin Junaidi, expressing solidarity with the MCB workers, assured them that workers of other organisations would not leave them alone in this testing time, and urged them to forge unity in their ranks.
Other speakers demanded that all those sacked, including union leaders, drivers, naib qasids, be reinstated and the previous medical facilities and system of pension be restored.
Bank’s version
MCB spokesman Kafeel Burney said that the participants of the demonstration on Chundrigar Road on Thursday “are not employees of the bank or representatives thereof.
No worker had been dismissed by MCB on account of trade union activities, or that any of its existing or previous employees had been mistreated by the bank, which fully abides by the legal, regulatory and social responsibilities.”
Hunger strikers
Eleven temporary workers of the National Bank of Pakistan, who have been on hunger strike for the past couple of weeks at the Karachi Press Club, have urged the authorities to take action against the management which was not regularising their services.
They said that the bank, under its policy in 2003, had regularised the services of hundreds of their colleagues but they, despite having necessary qualification, had not regularised their services and some other people had been recruited in their names.
They demanded that an inquiry be instituted into the matter and those found involved in it be taken to task, and that they be regularised.