Recently the government has passed an ordinance, the Industrial Relations ordinance (IRO) 2011, and has rightly earned kudos from the labor force of the country. This ordinance has been passed to fill some void created for the employees/working class coming under the federal government after labor issues were transferred to the provinces according to requirements of the 18th Amendment. However, rights, difficulties, predicaments, no-job injustices and sufferings faced by so-called white-collar job-holders and officers, whose numbers run into thousands, are not addressed. There is no proper and specific law to define and control their relationship with the employers or managements. There is no mechanism for them to resolve their job-related disputes. These people can, of course, form associations of their own, but these serve no real purpose.
Except for civil servants and unionized labor forces, all others are governed by an ‘unlegislated’, unspecified and ‘undocumented’ piece of rule called ‘master and servant rule’, which in various high court and Supreme Court decisions have been declared as against natural justice and against Islamic tenets (for example, 2000 PLC (C.S.) 796 and PLD 1990 Supreme Court 28 etc.).
Hundreds of petitions by employees are thrown by judges of various high courts, citing this dreadful ‘master ad servant rules.’
It may, however, be interesting to note that, the original ‘master and servant act’, when first enacted in England in 1867, gave the right of forming union to employees and workers. Under these act higher status workers, such as professionals, managers, clerks and agents, were never subject to the concept of master-servant relationship. In Pakistan, this rule is still used with impunity. For some time a vast majority of such unprotected bread-winners got some protection, thanks to the amended insertion of Section 2A in the Federal Service Tribunal Act 1973. But after Section 2A was declared ultra vires by the Supreme Court in January 2006, the fate of this category of employees got darkened forever.
It is said that, due to the striking down of Section 2A in the FST Act 1973, the fate of thousands of employees of such government-owned organizations had been very badly affected. But nobody from the government, or from among legislators, or the legal or the judges fraternity came out to give these people some forum to bask in the shine and warmth of the law. The government and all others must make laws for white-collar job-seekers.
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