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General Manager Pakistan International Airline and another V. Matiullah and 17 others,

PLJ 2017 Quetta 87 · Balochistan High Court

This case involved employees who worked as janitorial staff for Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), but who had been hired through a contractor. After working for anywhere between two and twenty years, they asked PIA to make their jobs permanent, since other workers doing similar work had already been regularized. When PIA did not respond, the workers filed a grievance case under Balochistan's labour law. The Labour Court initially rejected their claim, but the Labour Appellate Tribunal overturned that decision and ordered PIA to make their employment permanent after a three-month probation period, without back pay. PIA challenged this Tribunal decision in the Balochistan High Court, arguing that the workers were employees of the contractor, not of PIA, and therefore did not qualify as "workers" under labour law.

The High Court disagreed with PIA. It explained that courts use several tests to determine who a worker's real employer is, such as who controls the work, who pays wages, who has power to hire and fire, and whether the arrangement was genuine or simply designed to avoid labour law obligations. Applying these tests, the Court found that PIA exercised administrative control, paid the workers, and had power over their employment, even though a contractor was nominally involved. It ruled that a change of contractor did not change the employees' real employer. The Court held that the law recognizes indirect employment through contractors as still creating an employer-employee relationship. Finding no error in the Tribunal's decision, the High Court dismissed PIA's petition, meaning the workers were entitled to regularization.

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