How the justice system fails the working class

Muhammad Asif Javed Jutt did not just take his own life — he exposed the slow, systematic murder of justice in Pakistan. His self-immolation outside the Lahore High Court was a desperate act of a broken man and a damning verdict against a judicial system that has long abandoned the poor and working class. This was not the suicide of a labourer. This was the suicide of justice itself.

While the ruling elite debates judicial appointments, power struggles and constitutional amendments, no one asks a more fundamental question: What does the judiciary actually deliver to the working class? The answer is written in the flames that consumed Asif Jutt — nothing but delays, indifference and silent complicity with the powerful. 

His case was clear-cut. Two labour courts ruled in his favour. But a corporate giant dragged his case into the Lahore High Court, where it was buried under procedural delays for five years.

Pakistan’s courts function like private clubs for the elite. Corporate disputes and high-profile political cases take precedence, while labour cases rot at the bottom of cause lists — adjourned again and again until the workers who filed them lose all hope.

At the appellate level, things are even worse. The Labour Appellate Tribunal and the National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC) pretty much end up doing nothing. But the problem goes far beyond just the judiciary. It is essentially a system built to crush workers at every stage.

Asif Jutt was not the first to suffer at the hands of this system, and he will not be the last. Pakistan’s labour laws exist only on paper. In reality, every layer of protection for workers has been dismantled. Most small and medium businesses are not even registered. Those that are registered deliberately underreport the number of workers to escape labour laws.

The standard employment model is exploitation. A shocking study found that for every 50 permanent workers, there are 500 temporary workers. The private sector now runs almost entirely on contracts, and even the public sector — Wapda, Irrigation, Railways — has embraced this practice. The media industry is itself guilty – 90 per cent of its workforce is temporary or contractual.

Two-thirds of families in Pakistan earn less than the legal minimum wage. What little protection exists on paper is easily bypassed by employers, while the state looks the other way. The labour inspection system is nonexistent. Inspections are rare, and when they do happen, they are incompetent at best and corrupt at worst. Workers who try to organise are immediately fired. Even ‘secret trade unions’ do not survive. Many industries, including banking, export processing zones and essential services, have outright bans on unions.

In 2013, Pakistan had 1,905 certified collective bargaining unions (CBAs) for a workforce of 60 million. Laws like the Essential Services Act and Banking Sector 37B, 2-A have been weaponised to strip workers of their right to protest. This is not an economic crisis. This is structural violence — a deliberate, calculated strategy to ensure that workers remain powerless.

There was a time when labour lawyers were warriors for the working class. They fought cases pro bono, driven by ideology and commitment. Those days are over. For workers like Asif Jutt, this means double victimisation. First, they are exploited by their employers. Then, they cannot afford the exorbitant legal fees charged by top advocates, and those who do take their cases often do so with minimal interest. This is not a broken system. This is a system designed to break the powerless.

Asif Jutt’s case is the extreme end of an everyday reality. In Pakistan, labourers are illegally fired, denied wages and forced to work under inhumane conditions. But when they stand up for their rights, they are actively crushed. Strikes are met with brutal crackdowns. Workers who organise protests are branded as criminals under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).

The government, the judiciary, and the corporate elite work together to turn poverty into a crime and resistance into terrorism. What happens to a labourer who cannot fight back? He is left with only one option – burn in flames and set himself on fire in front of the courts that failed him, in front of the system that crushed him, in front of a society that will forget him.

The flames did not just consume Asif Jutt’s body; they exposed the ashes of a justice system that no longer delivers justice.

The courts did not fail on the day Asif Jutt set himself on fire. They failed every single time they delayed his case. They failed when they let corporations manipulate the system. They failed when they allowed the muted to be trampled in silence. The judicial system has become a graveyard of delayed cases, a playground for the elite and a slaughterhouse for the weak. The labour laws that should protect workers are ignored. The courts that should provide justice are indifferent. The media that should raise these issues is silent.

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect Geo.tv's editorial policy.

The writer is a journalist, researcher and human rights activist.

Originally published in The News