Can a handsome salary snatch away the employment rights?
In recent times agitation by a faction of employees of a few renowned private corporations in relation to employment disputes, created commotion among wider spectators. These agitations primarily arose out of unfair dismissal of employees working mainly in administrative and managerial capacities at offices. The concern grew bigger as at the advent of globalisation and rapid growth in international trade a large number of people these days are employed in offices rather than in conventional factory settings.
The well drafted Human Resources policies of many large private organisations are impressive but what role are they playing in ensuring the rights of employees in our country where plutocratic values aspire to prevail over rule of law and the concept of good governance? Do we have effective legislative provisions and governance mechanisms for protecting the interests of the citizens employed in these commercial establishments?
The Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, a long awaited piece of legislation, consolidated a bunch of statutes enacted over the past century for governing employment and labour relations. Despite criticisms of various interested groups, the legislation was enacted with a view to regulating relations between employees and employers including, but not limited to, matters such as termination, notice period, severance payment, labour welfare fund, maternity benefits and many more.
However, the scope of the Act was made limited by making it applicable only with regard to a certain types of employees who fall within the definition of “worker”. This legislation principally intends to protect the interests of the wage earners working mainly in industrial undertakings and thus the Labour Act excludes a certain class of employees who mainly work in managerial or administrative capacity from seeking redress under the Act. This class of employees are left on their own to 'freely negotiate' for themselves and match the bargaining power of their employers in pursuit of setting the standard of employment relations under the employment contract.
Relationship of an employee who is not a worker and the employer is governed purely by the law of contract. The employers often defend legal actions against such contracts by holding the employment to be mere “contractual” in nature and make unscrupulous attempts to deprive the employees of their rights. Such unprincipled trend thus equate employment contracts with ordinary commercial agreements and deny the very core principle of employment relations which is the inequality of bargaining power and that the employees' standing in a relationship of relative dependence. Therefore, in the absence of any special employment rights enforceable against the employers, the management or administrative employees would have to go on a crusade with their limited resources against their financially well resourced employers. The employees, more often than not, decide to suffer quietly.
It is a very unpleasant situation in Bangladesh that although there is a specialised court and specialised provisions for enforcing labour rights by workers, a certain class of employees comprising of a significantly large number of citizens have been left stranded without any recourse to such specialised courts. Why should these employees not be protected by such special statutory provisions? Or should we simply just wait till a big enough case pops up and then proclaim reclamations for appropriately drafted and amended legislation?
The importance of industrial tribunals is immense in developing countries with fast-growing economy like the one we have in Bangladesh. The enactment of the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 was indeed a remarkable achievement for a large number of wage earners who can seek protection under it.
It should, nonetheless, be appreciated now that given the rate and pattern of economic growth in our country it is high time we addressed the issues of people who are ordinarily employed in commercial undertakings in managerial or administrative capacity. It is a timely demand to the government that policy decisions are taken in order to bring the employment issues under principled regulation and pave way for a significant number of salary earners (also taxpayers!) to enforce their fundamental rights with regard to their employment in the true sense.
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