Our practices
Employment, labour and benefits
Prompt and proactive, our employment team offer commercial employment advice, underpinned by their extensive legal knowledge and expertise.
Yousaf Khosa
Shafaq Rehman
Our clients cross various business sectors, including banking and finance, recruitment, professional services, education, healthcare and media. This diversity gives us the advantage when assessing the needs of your business and providing employment advice and services.
We work closely with our clients to produce suitable documentation and to guide them through this ever more complex area of law. We offer both a contentious and non-contentious service.
Our non-contentious team can provide you with HR advice and bespoke suites of employment documentation such as staff handbooks, policies and procedures.
Our contentious team can advise on redundancies and transfers, both small-scale and collective, dealing with grievances and disciplinary issues as well as claims, obtaining injunctive relief for the misuse of confidential information and breaches of post-termination restrictions, and Court actions.
We assist local and foreign corporates with all aspects of labour and employment law concerns, such as day-to-day labour and immigration law issues, social security, hirings, terminations and layoffs, compensation arrangements, wages and stock option schemes, and negotiations with trade unions.
Our expertise extends to assisting our transactional counterparts with the labour aspects of M&A, joint ventures and corporate reorganisations. Our dispute resolution expertise ensures that we are regularly involved in contentious proceedings before national labour courts, labour appellate tribunals, and other forums.
The presence of specialist employment lawyers across our international network of offices ensures that we are well placed to advise on specific local issues, as well as coordinate cross-border advice and handle the labour aspects of multijurisdictional transactions.
At a glance
- Askari Bank Limited: represented client in a grievance petition filed by one of the ex-employee of the company before National Industrial Relation Commission.
- Clariant Group: represented client in the restructuring of its leather business in Pakistan, divided in to two stages. Our tasks including drafting of novation agreements for transfer of employees from (i) Archroma Pakistan Limited (formerly known as Clariant Pakistan Limited) to Clariant Chemical Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited, a company wholly owned by Clariant FZE and (ii) Clariant Chemical Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited to Stahl Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited. Stage (ii) is currently on going in Pakistan.
- Halliburton Worldwide Limited: represented client in a civil suit filed by one of the ex-employee of the company before the Civil Court, Islamabad.
- Halliburton Worldwide Limited: represented client in a grievance petition filed by one of the ex-employee of the company before National Industrial Relation Commission.
- United Energy Pakistan Limited: represented client in its acquisition of nine oil and gas exploration blocks from BP Pakistan Exploration Inc, BP Pakistan (Badin) Inc and BP Exploration (Alpha) Limited (together “BP”). The transaction involved inter alia the transfer of employees from BP to UEPL and the transfer of Provident and Gratuity Funds from BP to UEPL, with all amounts accruing thereto.
- YKK Pakistan (Private) Limited: represented client in respect of the termination of specific employees. Reviewed individual employment contracts and drafted termination agreements for those employees accepting the termination and termination notices for employees who refused to execute the termination agreement. Subsequently advised YKK in respect of proceedings initiated by the terminated employees before the Export Processing Zone Authority.
Practice areas
- Consultancy agreements
- Disciplinary and grievance
- Discrimination and victimisation claims
- Policies, procedures and handbooks
- Post termination restrictions and garden leave
- Settlement agreements
- Unfair dismissal
- Whistleblowing
- Wrongful dismissal
- Labour Courts and Appellate Tribunal matters
Publications and articles
Contact one of our lead employment partners, Yousaf Khosa or Shafaq Rehman, today.
