May Day thoughts

Once again, while May Day is being officially observed in Pakistan, as a holiday and mostly elsewhere in its traditional manner of glorifying sacrifice of mercilessly killed workers, in Chicago in early years of industrial revolution. It provided an opportunity, until disintegration of the former Soviet Union to celebrate the day as a symbol of victory of the working classes.
Elsewhere, politically motivated trade unionists availed of the opportunity to activate workers for the struggle for their rights and privileges along the lines of the socialist and communist states. That, of course, was a pre-Independence tradition the labour leadership of Pakistan started pursuing in a conceptual vacuum.
For industrialisation of the new nation was still in its infancy. It goes without saying that the fervour for glorification of socialist revolution gradually sobered in the aftermath of liquidation of the former Soviet Union, the change also curbing imitational appeal elsewhere too.
The explosion of that myth upset several developing nations that had been overtaken by the urge to emulate them. This should hold good also for the erstwhile republics of the Soviet Union that opted instead the US-led system of democracy and free enterprise.
Again, as it turned out to be, Pakistan, along with several other nations out to emulate the socialist economic pattern started aspiring for a synthesis of the two directly opposed systems from a "mixed" thrust so as to imbibe the best of both. As for Pakistan, People's Party government that came to power by virtue of 1970 elections hastened to introduce pro-labour laws, to the accompaniment of widespread nationalisation, besides declaring May Day as a closed holiday.
A great deal has since changed in Pakistan and the world outside, in political and economic terms, the plight of workers still remains to be mitigated. However, though hoping against hope for better days to come from the thrust of globalisation, they would better endeavour for their legitimate rights, away from means other than politically motivated agitations and street clashes.
This has to be more so, as former socialist world has been trying to catch up with the private enterprise system and all that goes with it. Needless to point out, the PPP-led political government now in power has started trying to ensure for the workers a legitimately better deal, under the obtaining circumstances. It will be recalled that the first labour policy of 1955 was announced by a democratic government with a view to lay down the foundation of a welfare state with emphasis on building the country's industrial base, employers playing a "paternalistic" role to develop an enterprise-based employer-employee relationship.
However, within a year of its announcement the country saw imposition of the first Martial Law in 1958. The second labour policy announced by the Martial Law regime in 1959 and later pursued by the quasi-democratic regime in the wake of 1962 Constitution fell a victim to bureaucratic ails untimely resulting in massive labour unrest.
As it was, both policies were tilted towards the employers, with the employers free to win support of the workers by resorting to social justice as a part of their economic agenda. As against these, the third labour policy given by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, championed the cause of the workers, giving them voice unlike ever before and heavily tilted towards workers, as paving the way for a confrontational industrial environment thus countering the objectives of harmony.
Viewed in this gloomy perspective the years between 1977 and 2002 will appear to have motivated the employers and workers alike to find a way to live together and to develop an environment of mutual understanding to coexist instead of relying on the government.
Needles to point out, enlightened employers and their counterparts among trade unionists joined together on the initiative of the Employers Federation of Pakistan to form the Workers-Employers Bilateral Council of Pakistan (WEBCOP) as a joint forum for resolution of controversial issues between them.
However, as ill-luck would have it, its prospects were marred by the Industrial Relations Ordinance 2002 which was implemented soon after the announcement of the fifth Labour policy, leaving little to doubt that the then government and its bureaucracy abhorred the growing consensus among the social partners and that much against the will of the employers and workers, they sowed the seeds of discord by withdrawing the right of freedom of association from many enterprises in the new law.
Thankfully, new democratic government which came into power in 2008, enacted the new Industrial Relations Act 2008, which in effect is a restoration of the IRO-1969 on the premise that the IRO 2002 was anti-union and had to be undone in keeping with the democratic government's political manifesto to support the workers' rights.
All in all, this should mark the beginning anew of the woes of the working people through the long evasive worker-employer harmony for the greater good of both, the government just playing the role of an honest facilitator, with no selfish axe to grind.