Sugar Workers Successfully Defend Union Rights in Pakistan

Posted to the IUF website 01-Jul-2003

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The newly-founded Pakistan Sugar Mill Workers' Federation has won an important victory against union busting in the federation's first important challenge. The federation was founded May 17-18 with the support of the IUF in an effort to end the historic divisions which have weakened Pakistan's trade union movement and to lay the ground for a united organizing and bargaining front of sugar workers faced with over-capacity, restructuring, and repression.

On May 19, following the federation's founding meeting, newly-elected federation head Abdus Salam Memon was informed by management of the Army Welfare Sugar Mill in Badin, Sindh province, that the plant union he also heads was being dissolved. Memon and other union leaders were shown a letter from the Army Welfare Trust Director of Farms demanding the immediate dissolution of the union, on the grounds that the Army Welfare Sugar Mill was the only Army Welfare Trust enterprise to have a union. The acting general manager than ordered the union - which has been in existence since the plant began operations in 1983 - to close its office and cease its activities, stating that he would do so forcibly if the union failed to comply. Factory managers were instructed to have no relations with the union and to cease communicating with the elected officers.

Through the IUF Pakistan Outreach Office, the union requested international support and fought back with a vigorous campaign. The Army Sugar Mills Workers' Union (AWSMWU) held general meetings twice daily, organized rallies and demonstrations and on June 23 held a limited hunger strike in front of the Badin Press Club.

On June 26, management requested a meeting with the union it had tried to dissolve and declared its willingness to recognize the union as representative of the plant workers. The union now has unrestricted access to its office in the factory and can hold meetings and general assemblies as needed.

As the mill management had formally applied to the Labour Directorate of Sindh province to cancel the union's registration, the final legal status of the union still awaits a decision by that body. The union is confident that they will receive a positive ruling because the management request to dissolve the AWSMWU was based on a case involving deregistration of a union at an Army Welfare Trust-owned cement factory in which deregistration was overturned by an appeals court ruling in 2001. The union is also contesting disciplinary procedures against two union officers and the transfer within the plant of 36 union members. The National Industrial Relations Commission has instructed management to make no further internal transfers.

The union credits the international response to the IUF's international solidarity appeal with playing an important role in pressuring management to retreat.