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10 July, 2008
Unilever has not always been top of the class in its treatment of agency workers in Asia. In 2004, when Unilever Pakistan sold off a plant producing Dalda brand edible oils and fats to a group of company managers, it came as no surprise that the new Dalda managers began applying the lessons learned at Unilever.
As well as buying out the competition, their labour relations’ behaviour involved reducing permanent employment and keeping potential union influence to a minimum. Dalda workers, however, are challenging the denial of trade union rights to agency workers, and are currently fighting back through a newly formed union.
They were encouraged by a successful challenge to casualisation at Coca-Cola Pakistan, and then contacted the IUF and the Coca-Cola union for support. Over 430 workers have signed up as members of the Dalda Food Employees Union, which then applied for official recognition from Pakistan’s relevant authority.
Since they feared a backlash, and were aware of Unilever’s savage reprisals against temporary workers’ at the company’s Rahim Yar Khan factory in Pakistan in November 2007, the union applied to the courts for a “stay order.” This blocked the company from firing workers, or closing the plant. But management violated the order and fired 266 workers at the end of May 2008.
By early June, the union had received official union registration, and with the support of the IUF-affiliated Pakistan National Federation of Food, Beverage, and Tobacco Workers’ Union, applied for collective bargaining status.
Dalda management challenged this, and workers have set up a permanent encampment in front of the plant with support from the Federation. With daily visits from representatives of trade unions, political, and civil society organisations, the camp has become a living symbol of the struggle against Pakistan’s repressive regime of outsourcing and use of casual labour.