Any company planning to establish its presence in a country will need to know the basics of that country’s employment laws.

In Pakistan employment laws were originally on the concurrent legislative list of Constitution of Pakistan and both federal as well as provincial legislatures were capable of enacting laws relating to employment. The scheme in practice was that federation enacted the basic substantial laws and the provinces were at liberty to enact their respective procedural laws in light of federal enactments.

However, in 2010 through 18th Constitutional Amendment, concurrent legislative list was abolished and power to make laws with respect to employment, was exclusively transferred to provinces. The cut out date of June 30, 2011 was set to replace the federal laws with provincial laws.

At present, most of the laws have been re-enacted by the provinces, however, for the most part the old federal laws have been adopted by the provinces with some minor modifications.

Employees are divided into two broad categories of workmen and managers. Workmen include skilled or unskilled labour and persons doing clerical jobs. Managers include supervisors and persons entrusted with works of managerial nature. The employment laws in Pakistan mostly deal with workmen. Non-workmen are governed by their contracts and the general law of contracts primarily regulates their relationship with employers.

The distinction between “workmen” and “managers” is not always easy to make because...

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