Exploring Labor Rights Violations in Pakistan's Textile Industry The Impact of Hiring Contract Workers

The purpose of this research was to shed light on the widespread issue of contractual workers' rights violations within garment factories across Pakistan, particularly focusing on monetary and non-monetary benefits, minimum wage adherence, and instances of "working off the clock." Employing a secondary data approach, the study analyses unpublished and confidential audit reports from various textile factories in Karachi, Lahore, and Faisalabad. These audits, conducted in 2017 by third-party entities, provide a quantitative basis for examining the relationship between contract employment and labour rights violations. A sample of 191 textile factories was selected using convenience sampling, with statistical analysis performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 20 software. The results underscore a significant relationship between the hiring of contract workers and the failure to provide monetary and non-monetary benefits, as well as a pronounced link with the practice of working off the clock. However, the study did not find a significant association between contract employment and the failure to pay minimum wages. These findings indicate a pressing need for stringent regulatory oversight and the implementation of comprehensive policies to curb labour rights violations in Pakistan's textile industry, emphasizing the importance of safeguarding worker rights in the face of contractual employment practices.