labor rights

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Workers & Mobility

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2021

ONCE upon a time, Karachi’s Shaheed-i-Millat Road comprised two narrow and uneven metalled roads, with a dirt-and-dust field in between. It looked vast to us children who crossed it every day to reach school, a 15-minute walk from home. Serving a number of peaceful neighbourhoods, the artery connecting Sharea Faisal with Jail Chowrangi was later developed into a double-track shahrah with a green median strip, service lanes and traffic signals at six chowrangis. Plant nurseries sprang up on the sides. For decades Shaheed-i-Millat Road was a delight for the eyes, despite its drastic land-use change from residential to commercial. 

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Nobel Prize and Minimum Wages

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2021.

The Nobel Prize for Economics for the year 2021 awarded to David Card for his contributions to scholarship on minimum wages has vindicated trade unions, labour and human rights advocates and pro-labour economists the world over. Card’s work in 1994 refuted the long-held hypothesis that increases in minimum wage reduces employment. At the time, 90 per cent of professional economists believed that a hike in minimum wage was bad for the economy. In Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, Card and Alan Krueger presented evidence that minimum wage hike has either no effect or a positive effect on employment.

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