The Great Resignation movement has a harder time finding footing in Pakistan

While the widespread access to the vaccine in most parts of the world led some to believe that things would soon return to the old definition of normal, the lasting effects of a pandemic have started to show the sort of aftermath it is liable to bring. In the US, there has been a mass exodus of workers quitting their jobs while calling for better pay, flexible hours, and more perks. Pakistan itself has not seen these sorts of reactions from the workforce, but given the similarity of motivations, it might serve the white- and blue-collar workers of the country well to consider it.

Dubbed as the “Great Resignation”, America is seeing some of its highest turnover within the last twenty years. CNN reported that 4 million workers left their jobs in July, while another 4.3 million did the same in August. Texas A&M University professor, Anthony Klotz, has calculated that 2021 would witness 10-15% more resignations than 2019, which saw a total of 42.1 million Americans quitting their jobs.

And why is this happening? Well, in simple terms, many people have come to the conclusion that they can do better. The year of lockdowns has given the citizens a lot of time to think and re-evaluate their choices. The burnout of 2020 has led people to demand better pay, more perks within the working hours, as well as more flexible working hours. In an interview with WESH2, Sara Anastasia, who worked a demanding sales job, wanted to continue her remote-work lifestyle, as it let her be closer to her family and experience moments that she might have otherwise missed. She asked the question many have pondered: “Well, why can’t I have that? We did all have it. We all worked from home. So why can’t I still have that?”

Flexibility in when and where work is done now outweighs compensation as a concern for many employees, Grant Thornton’s recent “State of Work in America” survey found, and as the working forces make this clearer to companies with their series of resignations, it’s starting to affect the bottom-line for those companies. With staffing shortages hamstringing many customer-facing industries and slowing the supply chain, companies are doing something that they’ve arguably never done before: showing empathy and trying to keep their employees happy.

“There’s mass attrition and it’s very expensive for employers to keep up with the number of people who are leaving,” says workplace well-being expert Jennifer Moss, author of The Burnout Epidemic. “Because it’s now a bottom-line issue, more organizations are jumping on board.”

Tech companies have been the first to adapt to the demands. LinkedIn has shifted almost all of its 16,000-employee workforce to remote work for now. Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site, has started experimenting with a four-day workweek. Bumble and Nike gave all its employees an extra week of vacation to combat burnout.

While the aforementioned changes impact office workers, those in the service industry have made similar demands, and the change in what economists call the reservation wage — minimum package of pay, working conditions, and opportunities for advancement one would need to accept a job — as well as businesses’ intentions of expansion, has given these workers a greater choice in employment. A Bloomberg report on the matter argues that this Great Resignation could result in improved productivity, as companies start to adapt. Notably, USAA raised their minimum wage to $21 dollars an hour, with plans to raise it again by 2025, while Chipotle finally raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour.

As the ’60 myth of the golden age of the US workforce, where a person was expected to stick with the same company for 40 years, comes to an end, the question arises of how this new paradigm might impact the workforce in Pakistan. After all, the motivations of discontent and the idea that more work can be done at home isn’t an American ideology, it’s a statement that echoes in the mind of many workers here as well.

Pakistan, unfortunately, starts with its incumbent working conditions in worse shape than the ones the Americans are protesting against. A 2019 report by the Human Rights Watch highlighted some of the sore points in Pakistan’s industrial sector, such as the 2012 fire in Karachi’s Ali Enterprises garment factory, where 255 people died and about 100 were injured due to an almost complete absence of fire and safety mechanisms. The report also stated that surviving workers said at the time that the management made no immediate efforts to rescue the workers and instead attempted to save their merchandise first.

Similarly, the protest against Khaadi in 2017, after it fired 32 workers for demanding their rights under Pakistani law, led to a deal being struck with the union leaders, but a year after the fact, it emerged that none of the promised changes had been implemented.

Lack of accountability for poor working conditions in garment factories is at the center of troubled industrial relations in Pakistan. Violations of workers’ rights are a problem in nearly all these factories and include practices contrary to both Pakistani law and codes of conduct that Western retailers insist their suppliers follow.

Workers, many of them women, told Human Rights Watch that they experience physical as well as verbal abuse, sometimes of a sexual nature, as well as forced overtime, denial of paid maternity leave, medical leave, and failure to pay the statutory minimum wages. Workers also said they faced pressure not to take toilet breaks, and some said they were denied clean drinking water. 

The combination of perceiving the workforce as expendable and replaceable, as well as the cruelly low bar set by the industries within the country, creates the image that Pakistanis, were they to start their own version of the Great Resignation, would not be battling for better pay or perks, but for basic labor rights.

While blue-collar workers are drawing the short end of the straw, the situation for white-collar workers is a bit different, as they seem to express greater hope with regard to obtaining better working conditions—or, in the face of employers not creating those conditions, they express a belief in taking matters into their own hands.

Syed Abu Turab, while speaking to The Newspaper regarding the media departments within different corporations, said that brands and companies have poor “knowledge of what that specific skill set is worthy of.”

Citing his own experiences, he remarked that he had seen job listings for a video editor—one who should know how to operate a camera and act as a colorist as well—all within Rs40,000. “{Meanwhile}, a standard freelance videographer, shooting a 10-minute video demands between Rs20-25,000” which would be payable after a week at the most, he added.

Lamenting the lack of change in the industry, Turab expressed that it left him with little choice but to start his own venture in order to create fair working conditions. “All this, to maintain my sanity, preventing my creativity to be [sic] compromised and keeping my wings attached to fly without any boundaries,” he stressed.

In a similar fashion, model and dance instructor Hafsah Haq spoke on the poor treatment and lack of efficiency within the corporate sector. She explained how a regular workday would often include hours of doing nothing due to limitations of other departments or the lack of senior members of the team being present at the time, and how that time could have been easily used in pursuing another gig or for improvement of one’s personal health had the working hours been more flexible.

Indeed, there has been a study, titled Going Public: Iceland’s Journey to A Shorter Working Week, which found fewer working hours could improve employee energy without compromising productivity. Instead of being given flexible work hours, Haq found herself feeling drained, overworked, and burdened by her employer. To her, it was better to work on a project-to-project basis.

Citing her earnings, the model stated that while her corporate job did not include having to do in-house modeling for the company, there was an occasion when she was obliged to do so without compensation. She further stated that her monthly salary at the time was the same as the payout she received from a hosting gig, for which she only needed to spare a few days of her schedule.

Pakistan’s economic conditions have been slowly worsening, and as would be the case in any country facing a fiscal pitfall, the discontent of the lower- and middle-classes soon turns into action. Within the last month, there has been a Rs15 rise in the price of fuel, as well as an increase in tariffs on utilities. Moreover, the lack of agreement between the Pakistani delegation and the IMF as of the time of filing leads one to believe that better days are not coming soon.

While there are a great number of differences between America and Pakistan that make it seem hard to imagine a similar movement taking off within the country, this nation does have a great degree of discontent within it. Should that reach a boiling point, it is possible that some companies would be forced to take notice.