WHILE almost all employers in Pakistan engage third-party contractors to carry out some or most of their work, many are not aware as to what type of work they can safely contract out and how the job will be managed administratively.

Human resource professionals had believed that core jobs in the office or factory operations should not be assigned to contractors’ employees. Such jobs required constant supervision by the company’s staff, which provided an opportunity for the contractors’ employees to claim the status of the principal employer’s workers. The experts believed that ancillary services, or non-core jobs, such as housekeeping, gardening or canteen operations, could be safely contracted out as supervision by the company personnel was not required.

However, due to a spate of Supreme Court judgments, employers now feel it has become risky to outsource even support services. The provisions of the draft labour codes have triggered caution because they state that permanent jobs cannot be contracted out. Nevertheless, a perusal of three SC judgments, since the 2013 landmark judgment in the Fauji Fertiliser Company (FFC) case, reveals that none of them bars ancillary services’ outsourcing. These judgments establish the........

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