Union Campaign Calls on English Team to Avoid Karachi Pearl Continental Hotel

It was a difficult enough decision for the ECB to agree to permit their touring team to stay in Karachi during England's coming tour. But now they're being asked to show solidarity with staff of the Karachi Pearl Continental by boycotting that hotel during their time in the city.

According to the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF):

For four years, the Karachi Pearl Continental (PC) Hotel Trade Union has been struggling against violence, intimidation and mass dismissals to defend basic trade union rights. What began as a union campaign to defend the rights of casual hotel employees escalated quickly into an all-out management attack on the existence of the union and the physical well-being and safety of its members and officers. Management has used threats, police violence, arbitrary detention, firings and the threat of dismissal in an effort to intimidate the hotel employees and pressure them to abandon their union. But the union refuses to give in.

There is more information on the website of the IUF's Asian secretariat, which also links to a form letter to the heads of the England & Wales Cricket Board and the Professional Cricketers Association requesting that they boycott the Pearl Continental while visiting Karachi.

Here is a copy of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Committee of Freedom of Association Report from January 2002 concerning the long-running conflict between staff and management at the hotel.