Following his excellent initial analysis of the labor law case lodged against Professor Yunus and three other Grameen Telecom board members, Shayan S. Khan, Executive Editor of the respected Dhaka Courier, wrote a short follow up article on his lively, informative, and entertaining Facebook page. Because so many ill-informed statements and claims are circulating about this case, we felt it was important to share Khan’s excellent article in full, which we do below with his generous permission.
One of the most misleading claims going around is that it wasn’t the government, but rather the employees of Grameen Telecom who filed the case against Dr Yunus. It was there in the statement by the Supreme Court Bar Association yesterday: শ্রম আইনের মামলা সরকার দায়ের করেনি, তা অধিকার বঞ্চিত শ্রমিকরাই তাদের ন্যায্য অধিকার আদায়ের জন্য দায়ের করেছেন।
The English version of the press release states: “The government filed no cases against him on labour issues; rather the cases were filed by the oppressed labourers for materializing their legal lawful and genuine claim and right.”
In recent weeks, we’ve heard the same claim from the highest levels of government, and Nayeemul Islam Khan on Khaled Mohiuddin’s show last night kept repeating it, going unchallenged throughout.
We’re going to look at what the High Court judgement of August 8, that was later upheld in the Supreme Court (both going against Dr Yunus), says. It is available on the Supreme Court website. Copy/pasting the relevant section verbatim:
Facts in short are that Mr. S.M. Arifuz Zaman, Labour Inspector (General) Department of Inspection, Factories and Establishment, Dhaka lodged a complaint on 20.08.2021 with the
third Labour Court, Dhaka alleging that in course of inspection of Grameen Telecom Company (hereinafter referred to as GTC) he detected the infringements of the following provisions of Bangladesh Labour Ain, 2006 and Bangladesh Labour Rules, 2015.
(1) On completion of probationary period jobs of the labourers and employees are not made permanent in violation of section 4(7)(8 ) of the Bangladesh Labour Ain, 2006 (herein after referred to Act No.42 of 2006)
(2) Labourers and Employees are not granted annual leave with pay or money against earned leave in violation of section 117 of Act No.42 of 2006, and,
(3) Labourers Participatory Fund and Labour Welfare Fund were not constituted and 5% of the net profit of the GTC was not deposited in above funds under the Labour Welfare Foundation Law, 2006.
Later, Justice S M Kuddus Zaman, who authored the verdict on behalf of himself and Justice Shahed Nuruddin, writes about a reference to case law made by Dr Yunus’s lawyer:
“In the case of S.M. Jahidul Islam and others Vs. Syed Ahmed Chowdhury reported in 4 CLR (AD) 2016 the Appellate Division has opined that no complaint under above Ain should be made directly under section 307 without seeking redress to the Labour Court for nonpayment of service benefits.”
Section 307 of the Labour Act is where it says “Whoever contravenes, or fails to comply with, any of the provisions of this act or the rules, regulations or schemes” shall be punishable with fine or imprisonment i.e. it brings punishment in the form of a prison sentence into the picture for violations of the Act.
Towards the end, while dealing with the case law reference, Justice S M Kuddus Zaman writes:
“We have carefully gone through the judgement of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh reported in 4 CLR (AD) (2016) and found that above case was filed by an individual labourer for realization of his service benefits. On the other hand this case was filed by an authorized Inspector of the Government…”
So the judge has even differentiated between the two cases on the basis that one was filed by a labourer, and one by a government officer. If that’s not the government, I don’t know what is.
Elsewhere, while describing the DIFE inspector’s activities, Justice Kuddus Zaman writes how the visit that led to him filing the case on 20.08.21 was made “on the direction” of a higher authority: “On the direction of the higher authority he again inspected GTC on 06.08.2021 and finding repetition of above violations….”
If it wasn’t filed by the government, someone should tell that to the judges handling the case. The fact is it was, and that is the basis on which it is proceeding, and the workers were only later brought on board. [Emphasis added]