In February 2021 Metro Pakistan sacked Tahir Mehmood, the general secretary of Metro Habib Employees Union (MHEU) in Pakistan. His dismissal was supposedly for absenteeism in 2017, but in reality it looked like another step in the company’s union-busting campaign. Over the last few years, several trade union leaders have been dismissed by Metro Pakistan, including every elected general secretary of the union since 2013.
More recently, in addition to sacking Tahir, almost half of the current union office bearers were targeted by the company through warnings, notices, change of workplace and employment status, and dismissals.
At one point, there was a second union at the company. METRO management fired its leaders and refused a collective bargaining agreement.
The company was also not willing to bargain with MHEU. In 2018, a referendum was held to identify the collective bargaining agent union, and MHEU was certified as the bargaining agent in 2019. The negotiations started, and the parties had 15 meetings (some lasting just five minutes) until May 2020 but could not reach an agreement. Metro Pakistan was not bargaining in good faith and denied almost all the demands by the union.
Metro Pakistan is part of Metro A.G., a multinational German-based food wholesaler that operates in 26 countries across the globe, under METRO and MAKRO banners.
