Pakistani activists face deep-seated challenges, such as an unequal,
essentially feudal division of land (cemented under British rule) and the decades-long decline of the
country’s trade unions.  But there is much, too, in the terms of
Pakistan’s international trade relations that must be altered if
workers are to share fully in their nation’s extraordinary economic
boom—a boom which has seen the economy go from 5 percent GDP growth in
2003 to over 7 percent today.

With the notable exceptions of the soccer ball and surgical instruments
industries (both centered in Sialkot), few of Pakistan’s exports have
faced the sort of labor rights scrutiny that is routinely given to the products of other countries, such as China.  A cotton sector that ranks
as the third largest in the world and a massive textile industry
somehow pass right under the global media’s radar. 

Moreover, as noted, countries like the U.S. are wholeheartedly backing
General Musharraf’s efforts at privatization, with little attention to
what this means for the lives working people.  Between 1991 and August 2006,
the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) notes
that “the number of public sector industrial units and utilities
privatized… reached 161”—affecting an unofficially estimated 700,000
workers (“Denial and Discrimination:  Labour Rights in Pakistan,” May
2007).  Effectively union-free zones have sprung up around major
cities .  PILER says 41,000 bank employees alone lost their jobs (see
Harry Kelber, “The World of Labor,” The Labor Educator, July 20,
2007).  Stable, fulfilling work with strong communities is disappearing.

There is resistance within Pakistan: union activists at the Karachi
Shipyard and Engineering Works are challenging a ban on union
activities and resisting a possible retrenchment that might hand the
shipyard over to unskilled contractors (“Arbitrary imposition of GHS
rejected”, The News, August 2, 2007).  And Supreme Court Chief Justice
Iftikhar Chaudhry overturned a plan to sell off Pakistan Steel Mills to
a private group that included a close friend of Prime Minister Aziz
(Chaudhry was later fired for his temerity on this and other issues,
only to be reinstated by his Supreme Court colleagues). 

But it is important that the international labor movement support
Pakistani activists.  This support should come through pressuring the
government of Pakistan and foreign firms to abide by ILO provisions,
through financial backing of labor organizations operating in both
export industries and the informal sector of brick kilns and cotton
fields, and through a dialogue with the country’s civil society at
large.

As the Bush administration becomes increasingly identified with the
authoritarian policies of Islamad, thereby deepening hostility to the
United States, the Democrats would do well to see Pakistan in the
whole, not just narrowly through the lens of nuclear and terror
politics, and to ponder what sort of engagement will truly lead to the
stability they seek.