With a group of young staff - Aiman, Farhat, Humaira and Rafiq, who are going to help deliver the courses in Karachi and Hyderabad, we write a course for activists in the ‘informal sector’. This includes over 90% of all workers in Pakistan, working without any formal contracts, usually in workplaces with no inspection or controls of any kind. For women this is often their own homes, the putting out system or cottage industry. We expect to have a mix of people, including some from the brick kilns, often bonded labourers, garment workers – often women working at home, power loom workers and activists working against child labour.
Last night I met Mian Qayyum, leader of the power loom workers in Faisalabad, called the Manchester of Pakistan, centre of Pakistan’s huge textile industry. He tells the story of the many thousand strong march to the HQ of the power company last December to protest the power cuts - load shedding as it is called here -which stop them, as piece rate workers, from earning a proper wage. They succeeded in forcing the minister to guarantee 20 hours power a day for the looms and 16 hours for domestic supplies. There were all kinds of threats and provocations on the march, including being shot at and, since then, attempts to buy off the leadership. The union, the Labour Qaumi Movement, LQM, has 20,000 members and is one of very few examples of workers in the so-called informal sector successfully organising.
P.S. A few days later, working out with Mian Qayyum the course we will do in Faisalabad in ten days time. I ask: ‘Having won recognition from the employer, pay rises etc, what does the LQM want next?’ He replies: ‘Political representation.’ Which is fine, quite logical. But it scares me, given what the political elite here does to those who threaten their power.
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