Pakistan May Day Women and Farm Workers Unite vs. Bosses

SINDH, PAKISTAN, May 1 — More than 1,000 workers marched here today, demanding an end to the anti-labor contract system, to recognize home-based women workers as workers under labor laws, and to implement the labor laws and safeguards for agricultural workers. No law can protect workers from capitalist exploitation. PLP asserted that we need to build a communist movement to defeat imperialism and overthrow capitalism with workers’ power.
The mass May Day was staged by the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), Home Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF), and Sindh Agricultural General Workers Union.
One speaker said that workers — from the fields to the factories — were facing brutal exploitation. While there may be labor laws for the industrial sector, they are merely on paper and remain unimplemented. He called the ruling class here an agent of finance capitalists and imperialists, working to privatize and end state subsidies of oil, gas, food and water. The union leaders team up with the bosses to feed workers illusions. The bosses’ laws don’t protect workers. Workers protect workers. Every fight we engage in exposes the ruling class. What’s more, each fight toughens us up. We build confidence in our ability to fight for communist revolution.  
Militant Women Workers
A woman speaker attacked the deprivation of millions of home-based workers who use their homes as factories and produce goods for industrialists. These mostly women workers are part of the production process and make up a 40 percent share of the national economy. These women work two jobs simultaneously, as a waged factory worker and as an unwaged worker in the family. The speaker said those working in this “informal labor sector” are not even recognized as workers by the ruling class government. More than 15 million home-based workers have been demanding their basic rights for the last 20 years, and now they are organizing. This fight against sexism is going to hit the bosses where it hurts. These women had a militant contingent on May Day.
Finally, a leader of the farm workers said that though technically they are covered under labor law Sindh Industrial Relations Act 2013, the laws are never enforced. The landlords force them into private jails. Forced labor is also common. Agricultural workers are treated worse than animals.
The non-Muslim workers are facing even worse attacks in the name of religion. This includes the Kolhi (descendants of the hunting-gathering population that once subsisted on Thar Desert’s fauna), Bheel  (a majority-Hindu tribal community) and Meghwars (the “untouchable” community under the Hindu caste system). Girls are kidnapped, sexually tortured, and forced to change their religion. Religious leaders, the government and the courts are all responsible for this reign of sexist, racist terror.
A mass revolutionary communist PLP will bring this struggle to its logical conclusion — the overthrow of the bosses. The religious and military fascists will be eradicated with communist revolution. For that, we need one international party, not unions. It’s fertile ground and dangerous work, but the harvest will be abundant.