Call for Solidarity: Khalq Workers' Legal Aid

Pakistan has been devastated by the convergence of multiple crises: climate disaster, food shortages and inflation as high as 40 percent. The corporate sector, which draws privileges worth $3 billion annually from the state, is shifting the burden of the growing crisis onto the working class through mass layoffs and closure of factories without compensation for workers. In recent weeks, Pakistan’s textile industry has fired thousands without paying their salaries due, pushing millions deeper into poverty.

With 40 percent children already malnourished, and accelerating food and fuel inflation, the consequences of mass unemployment will be catastrophic. Moreover, a 2019 Human Rights Watch report details the dangerous environment in which textile workers perform their labor, with weak environmental, health and safety standards damaging worker health and causing immense pollution in working class neighborhoods. Preliminary findings from an in-progress study by the Haqooq e Khalq Party (HKP) reveals that lead content in the water supply of key industrial areas exceeds permissible limits by an unfathomable 1000 percent.

Workers are unable to effectively push back against this attack on their incomes and health because less than one percent of the country’s workforce is unionized. Moreover, workers continue to be denied their salaries without recourse to justice due to little legal representation. The actual cost of cheap garments from Pakistan is borne by workers in the form of wage theft, unemployment, police brutality and health problems.

For the past few years, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party has been leading the fight against labor exploitation. We have organized numerous labor protests for minimum wages and better working conditions. We hold regular sessions on workers' health and environmental hazards and support the fight against pollution, unsafe working conditions, and other effects of voracious production.

One of the key sites for implementing labor laws is the labor courts in Pakistan, where lawyers from our party regularly represent textile workers. Despite some significant victories for workers' rights, our work remains limited due to financial constraints. Consequently, HKP has set up a workers’ legal aid center entirely dedicated to providing pro bono services to factory workers. Our primary objectives are as follows:

1. Reinstatement of illegally fired workers

2. Implementation of labor laws

3. Formation of trade unions

4. Implementation of environmental, health and safety regulations

Textile workers from Pakistan not only produce foreign exchange for the Pakistani state through exports but also fuel the global fast fashion industry that reaps billions of dollars in profits annually. These workers face dire conditions today because the system refuses to meet basic labor and environmental rights. We request sympathizers worldwide to help raise funds to establish a permanent legal team to aid workers. We aim to raise an initial fund of $30,000 to build a robust infrastructure that can support working class struggles across the country.

Economic, climate and social justice all converge on the question of workers’ rights. We hope you will aid us in affirming the dignity of life amid corporate greed and abandonment from an apathetic state.

Regards,

Dr. Ammar Ali Jan

Haqooq-e-Khalq Party- General Secretary