On May 1, Pakistan’s political class did what it does best: gathered under banners, made promises, posed for photos, and went home. Meanwhile, the country’s workforce, all the way from brick kiln loaders in Kasur to domestic workers in Lahore’s Defence to garment stitchers in Korangi, went back to work. Without insurance. Without protection. Without rights. That over 12,000 bonded labourers were rescued in Punjab in just one year should have been front-page news in any serious democracy. Instead, it suffers in oblivion, reduced to a footnote in speeches about “dignity of work.” Entire sectors (agriculture, brick kilns, and domestic labour) run on a machinery of modern-day slavery that the state continues to ignore. This silence is not passive. Rather, it smacks of strategic convenience. Just ask millions of domestic workers, predominantly women, who continue to work without contracts or legal cover despite the existence of the Punjab Domestic Workers Act. The law is there. The will to enforce it isn’t. In the industrial zones, the story doesn’t change. Pakistan’s garment sector, which powers our export economy, is built on the backs of women earning far below the minimum wage, routinely harassed, and denied safe transport or maternity leave. While factory owners lobby for subsidies, their workers remain invisible in budget speeches and trade agreements. And what of the state’s big economic promises? Just days ago, the Prime Minister vowed to make Pakistan an “economic hub.” But economic hubs don’t run on broken backs and stolen wages. Labour is not a line item in GDP. It is the foundation. A foundation this government, like many before it, continues to crack under the weight of its own apathy. Labour Day has passed. The banners have been folded. But the work remains. The Pakistani state must stop using labour as a prop and start treating workers as citizens. We need enforcement of the legislation that already exists before rolling our sleeves to work on new projects. We need accountability for bonded labour; not selective outrage. And most urgently, we need to start seeing informal workers, may they be women, home-based workers, sanitation staff, as the core of our economy, not its periphery. Until then, May 1 will remain what it is now: a calendar ritual. And the majority of Pakistan’s workers will remain where they’ve always been: outside the tent of justice, looking in. *