It was practice of businesses to enter into contract with a company for providing employees on contractual basis. The reason is simple that the Contractual Employees/workers cannot claim the pay as well as other benefits from the company as equal to permanent employees because the contractual employees was not considered to be the employees of the contractor shall not be the employees of the company, if they are under the control and management of the contractor and not that of the company. The second reason was that the contractual employees are not on the pay-roll of the company and the management even not aware of the numbers of the workers employed by the Contractor or about the terms and conditions of their appointment of service and the contractor has the power of hiring and firing the employees, and assigns works to them and the company has no concern with it.
In 2013, the full bench of Honorable Supreme Court, comprises on the then Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chudhry, Mr. Justice Jawad S. Khuwaja and Mr. Justice Ijaz Ahmed had given a verdict in Civil Appeal 83 and 84/2006, Title Fauji Fertilizer Co. Ltd. V/s NIRC & others, which was reported in 2014 PLC 10 and reinstated several workers who were in contractor’s service. In this case, the Honorable Supreme Court holds that the employees of the contractor shall be the employees of the company, if the contractor engaged the workers for running of the affairs of the company and not for some other independent works, which has no concern with the production of the company; if the employees are working in the department of the company, which constituted one of the principal organs of the company, the machine belongs to the company, the raw material is supplied by the company and the said department is controlled by the supervisors of the company, the employees of the contractor shall be the employees of the company, the employees engaged directly or through a contractor would be deemed to be the employees of the company for whose benefit they perform functions, even though the control test is an important test, it is not the sole test, a multiple pragmatic approach weighing up all the factors for and against the employment has to be adopted.
On 08-12-2017, the Honorable Apex Court of Pakistan has announced a landmark judgement on the issue of contractual employees. Brief history of the case is in six Constitutional Petitions filed by 209 employees challenged their contract status in the High Court which was disposed of by Sindh High Court by order dated 1-6-2017 and directed the Chief Executive Officer of the Pakistan State Oil Co. Ltd. to consider the cases of regularization of the employees who were employed through contractors/outsource from years 1984 to 2013.
In this significant judgement, the Honorable Supreme Court has ruled that the contractual employees should get the same salary and benefits as equal to permanent employees. In this judgment, the Honorable Judges have shown their best wisdom by making philosophical point that it is a complete violation of human dignity, if two different employees get different benefit for the same work. The Honorable Supreme Court has further held that the denial of equal pay for equal work to contractual employees, daily wages workers, casual employees amounted to exploitative enslavement, emerging out of a domineering position.
Though the above landmark judgement is related to the contractual workers of government organizations, however I have strong view that the same shall be applicable in all contractual workers, works in private organizations.
