On the day before Eid a special police force in Riyadh intervened to end a 10-day strike by 300 Pakistani truck drivers in a leading transporting company. The striking workers said their employer has denied them their due rights. The company Chairman Muhammad Al-Bassami, refuting the charges, said that the workers were given all their legal rights.
The news appeared only in a local Arabic daily, Al-Watan though it did not give all the details. However, the readers learned from the report that some expatriate workers launched a strike during a peak business season and the company had no choice but to recommend the workers’ deportation unless they returned to work immediately. The public also learned from the report that the company charged the Pakistani drivers with disrupting the company’s normal functioning simply because they were asked to wear company uniforms.
The readers are eager to know what exactly prompted the strike because it is not reasonable to believe that any expatriate worker in his right mind would dare to go on an illegal strike which would only end in their humiliating deportation. Readers have the right to know all the details of the incident, particularly about the company’s reply to the serious charges made by the striking workers. They said the company did not pay them their full wages because the company deducted the cost of their visa and iqama (residence permit) fees and health insurance subscriptions from their meager pay.
The case is being examined by the Labor Office, which is expected to announce a decision this month. No doubt, the decision would be their deportation as they violated the terms of the work contract. After that, the details of the case would be buried in the files of the office leaving the public in the dark about the circumstances that led to the unhappy development.
They feel that the workers deserved a more humane treatment than the strict legal approach though their act could be viewed as a pressure tactic at a peak business season. As a common reader, I am not convinced that the refusal to work is a sufficient justification for firing and deporting 300 workers who might have come to the Kingdom because of very difficult financial circumstances at home.
It is quite appropriate to react when some foreign workers try to damage the interests of a company by refusing to work at peak seasons causing huge loss to the owners and inconvenience to their clients. There are certain questions that the readers want to ask such as why the workers did not explore the legal avenues to address their complaints, particularly when they had in their possession all the evidence to prove the company’s violation of labor regulations.
If the workers had negotiated with the management or complained to the Labor Office it would have spared the company huge losses estimated at SR15 million. This would also have avoided any inconvenience to the company’s regular customers.
It is the duty of the media in Saudi Arabia to provide the public with all the facts about critical issues so that they are able to make informed judgments.
The media should have made a thoroughly professional job of reporting the story giving the views of both the sides. Instead of a follow-up story with the explanations given by each party refuting or challenging the opposite side’s assertions, what the readers got was a company ad blaming the workers and threatening them with dire consequences.
On the other hand, the striking workers did not have the means to purchase an ad space to explain their side of the story. The newspapers and television channels would have done a great service to the Saudi public if they had published a balanced report on the issue. However the media published the views of one of the workers.
I believe that this strike by the Pakistani drivers is not a trivial affair to be dismissed and forgotten after a few days. On the contrary it should draw the attention of the labor authorities as a shape of things to come in the Saudi labor market unless some pre-emptive steps are taken. It should raise the concern of the Saudi employers about the possibility of labor strikes disrupting the lifestyle they are used to. The incident might also create doubts in the minds of foreign investors about the stability of the Saudi labor market. The event should prompt the legal establishments to take a more serious view of the charges of exploitation by Saudi employers of their helpless Asian laborers. The incident might frighten the Pakistani workers planning to come to the Kingdom and make them seek work elsewhere.
One also feels that the story, as carried by the media, suffered from several lacunae. One gets the impression that our media did not discharge its responsibilities properly. At least the media could have proved or disproved the charges and countercharges by the workers and their employers by examining the salary documents available at banks.
— Muhammad Hassan Alwan is a Saudi writer. E-mail him at: [email protected]
