By Syed Foaad Hassan, Lahore based journalist and publicist, Associated with Lowe and Partners Worldwide, MS in Advertising and PR from Beaconhouse National University
Advertising Industry is the most neglected one in Pakistan as compared to other industries. No one ever talk about conditions of employees there. Yeah we speak for labors, Government employees, sportsmen or media workers in-fact everyone but no one highlights issues of employees working in an advertising agency or services industry.
Yes most of them are educated they don’t protest like everyone else and soul of capitalism, race to earn more and more have slayed life and human inside them. They are not special or different from a common man but their work load and stress don’t allow them write or raise voice and in most of the cases they are afraid of their “Saiths” (feudal) and losing their job because unemployment in Pakistan is increasing like terrorism in Pakistan, I think if we focus towards reason for unemployment then we can understand causes of target killings, suicides, street crime and this rapid increase in terrorism. Every developed or developing country makes sure that employees work eight hours a day not more than that or in other cases if they work more than that they get paid for it (as per hourly wage) or they get holiday for their late sittings or some other incentives.
Coming towards my point, Most of the Advertising agencies in Pakistan force their workers to work day and night or even during weekends, moreover multinational agencies like Lowe and Partners worldwide, Ogilvy and Mathers, Publicis group and IAL Saatchi etc. are involved in it. They always have a simple response to your complain, if you can’t work 12-14 hours straight because you are in a services industry then why don’t you quit?, So tell me under these circumstances who will put his job at risk?
Most of the clients of these agencies are multi-national companies like Nestle,, Coca Cola and local or international Telecom companies and they make their partner agencies to deliver whenever they want. For proof you all can talk to any employee of an ad agency. Can anyone tell me does Nestle or Coke follow same model for their own employees globally in their own offices? The reason people still prefer MNCs is that they pay on time while if we talk about local advertising agencies with local clients like Government, they don’t even pay their employees on time and they work day and night even on Sundays. If any agency refuse to deliver after working hours than due to lot of competition in the market ,Employers are afraid of losing business.
So our conditions are worse than Asian labors in Middle East or anyone else, we have to come on time but never know when we’ll be back home. When you reach home your clients bug you by calling and sending emails, you don’t even get sound sleep. CEOs and directors are all businessmen, they have studied business, organization behavior and everything but their “Saith” (feudal) mentality makes them an ignorant. When you don’t get little piece of peace and satisfaction in your life, all you getting is stress then how can you keep your home happy? How can you make your work place peaceful? It eventually disturbs everything and you become a monster, taking pills to sleep, using drugs etc. It’s really difficult to work under these conditions and you don’t even get paid or additional holidays for late sittings. I don’t know where I can raise voice for advertisers, which is the concerned authority? Is there anything like labor laws and employee rights in Pakistan? I didn’t know after specialization in advertising and public relations I will get trapped under this worst corporate slavery.
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