Globalization Fuels Women Workers’ Struggle in the Philippines

For women workers in the Philippines or elsewhere in the world, it is not enough and indeed, is counter-productive to adopt a slogan of "women's participation" if this simply means integrating women in the neoliberal development model. It is grossly misleading to banner the empowerment of women without addressing the economic and political basis of our disempowerment and marginalization in the decision-making structures of society.  This is because the marginalization of women is embedded in the structure of class, race and national oppression.

BY MELAI DAPULANG*
Posted by Bulatlat.com

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, assumed power last January 2001 after a popular uprising ousted her corrupt and criminal predecessor, Joseph Estrada, from the presidency. That might lead some to expect that a President, a woman at that, who was swept into power under such portentous circumstances would make a positive impact on the lives of women workers in the Philippines. And that we'll live happily ever after.

Alas, we don't live in fairytales. 

Surely not the 800 workers of Chong Won Fashion. They produce garments exclusively for export for Gap, American Eagle, Pierre Cardin, J.C. Penny, DKNY, Old Navy, and many other name brands. Regular workers at this Korean-owned firm located in the largest export-processing zone in the Philippines are paid PhP 217 per day (or US$ 4.25) for manufacturing undergarments that sell US$ 50 a piece in the United States.  Contractual workers (or casual workers) in the same company - who comprise nearly half of production workers - are paid less; as low as PhP 162 (or US$ 3.17) per day which is 25 percent below the minimum wage in the area. 

Chong Won also subcontracts to home workers in the surrounding communities. These home workers, who are mostly women and their children, are paid by the piece-rate.  Their earnings are very erratic, ranging from PhP 150 to 1,000 per day (US$ 3 to 19), depending on orders from Chong Won.  But home workers do not enjoy any of the benefits mandated by law such as social security, health and maternity benefits. 

The experience of Chong Won workers typify the more general situation in labor-intensive export manufacturing in the Philippines which is touted by the government and IMF-WB technocrats to be the key to industrialization in the third world in the era of globalization. 

Export-oriented, import dependent maldevelopment

The Philippine government followed this formula by promoting garments exports in the 1970s and electronics exports in the 1990s and these two sectors are emblematic of the problems of the Philippine economy and its so-called export-oriented industrialization strategy. 

Both sectors are located in the low value-added end of the global production chain and require low-wage and low-skilled workers. Female workers comprise the bulk of the workforce in the two industries: around 77 percent in garments and 72 percent in electronics.

Electronics asssemblers and the bigger garments exporters prefer to locate in export processing zones (EPZs) which are notorious for their labor control regimes. 

EPZs are also notorious for their unwritten no union, no strike policy.  In these zones, young, single, women comprise the majority of the workforce.  They are preferred in part because of a number of gender stereotypes.

 First, women are considered more manually dexterous with nimble fingers appropriate for small parts assembly.  Second, they are regarded as more diligent and patient, which is deemed necessary due to the long hours of repetitive work. Third, they are considered easier to manage, more docile and less likely than male workers to join trade unions or "cause trouble." Finally, women are also assumed to be more willing to work for low wages and have a higher rate of voluntary turn-over due to their supposed status as "secondary wage earners" and the primacy of their reproductive role in the family. 

In EPZs, it is common for workers to work 12 to 14 hour workdays, six or seven days a week, in a span of three or four months at a time. Workers on extended hours, evening or overnight shifts are more easily fatigued, and suffer other health problems as a result of physically demanding work schedules. Women workers, in particular, are exposed to threats to their safety because of the late hours they are forced to keep - sexual harassment, rape, and violent crimes in general. Workers' families also suffer when parents have to spend even evenings and weekends at work. 

To ensure bigger profits for capitalists, women workers' reproductive functions are regulated in many firms located in EPZs.  There are reported cases of single women being subjected to "virginity tests" to ensure that they are sexually inactive, or else they are not hired.  In many cases, married women who are already employed are required to practice birth control including ligation. Married women who "misrepresent" themselves as single when they applied for work are terminated.

Applicants endorsed by the mayor or even higher officials are given priority in employment in exchange for the mayor's support for policing the industrial space and maintaining an union-free environment. In Cavite - host to the country's biggest EPZ and several other industrial enclaves - the winning candidate for governor solicited the support of investors by brazenly  promising to enforce a no-strike policy and rid the entire province of unions.

Business thereby capitalizes on existing patriarchal and paternalistic social relations and fascist officials for purposes of labor control and trade union repression. 

But the export-oriented import-dependent garments industry in the Philippines -- which accounts for nearly 15 percent of total manufacturing employment -- is now on the decline. This is due to global overproduction and stiff competition among third world countries all of whom are trying to export their way out of indebtedness. Contributing to its local demise is the fact that the Philippines is set to lose its quotas in its biggest market, the United States, as the Multi-Fiber Agreement is phased-out.

TNC suppliers are already relocating to lower wage countries such as China and Vietnam or countries closer to the end-markets such as Mexico and the Carribean. These countries also have preferential access to the U.S. market because of NAFTA and the Carribean Basin Initiative, respectively. 

These so-called "export-oriented industries" are virtually detached from the rest of the economy except in sourcing labor. TNCs or TNC subcontractors merely take advantage of generous incentives and subsidies from public resources and cheap unorganized labor for assembling imported components for re-export to other countries.  They are vertically integrated with the international supply chain of TNCs, but not with the domestic economy.  Without significant backward and forward linkages to the local economy, these export-oriented industries offer little potential for sustained industrial deepening. At least not at a scale that would generate mass employment and provide adequate incomes for workers. 

This demonstrates the perils of allowing foreign monopoly capital to dictate the terms of the country's (mal)development. 

Globalizing the Philippine economy

But foreign monopoly capital has indeed dictated the country's economic policies since the United States colonized the archipelago in 1899.  Even when the Philippines was granted nominal independence in 1946, the United States ensured that the country would remain a neocolony.  This was done by imposing unequal treaties, propping up a succession of puppet governments and maintaining a mercenary proxy army beholden to U.S. imperial might.  

The last two decades of neoliberal globalization in the Philippines have seen the most intense opening up of the country to foreign capital in its history.  Tariffs were slashed, 100 percent foreign ownership of industries allowed, utilities and strategic industries deregulated, government assets privatized and capital flows liberalized. All these reforms were enacted under the diktat of monopoly capitalist-controlled institutions, the IMF, the WB and the ADB. 

The liberalization program was accompanied by greater regional integration with the establishment of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).  And of course there was the country's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 which has since governed much of economic policy making in the country. 

But as the 2002 Philippines Human Development Report (PHDR) puts it, "while there has been structural change, it is of the wrong kind."

Contrary to neoliberal globalization's promise of industrialization, the share of industry to total employment and output in the Philippines has remained stagnant over the last three decades. Neither has agricultural liberalization helped the farming sector.  A US$ 1.3 billion agricultural trade surplus turned into a US$ 3.5 billion deficit after the country's accession to the WTO.  As a result, the agricultural sector lost over a million jobs between 1994 and 2000, increasing rural poverty by 690,000 families.

Jobless Growth

This goes some way in explaining the country's dismal employment picture.  In the first quarter of this year, the number of jobless Filipinos has reached 4.8 million, pushing the unemployment rate to 13.9 percent.  This year's unemployment rate may even top last year's 11.2 percent which is already the worst unemployment figure in over 40 years. 

Small wonder that 2,700 Filipinos leave the country each day to work overseas.  Labor export has become an increasingly important outlet for surplus labor over the last two decades.  The number of deployed overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) has more than doubled from 372,784 in 1985 to 866,590 last year.  OFW deployment has even increased faster than domestic job creation. 

In the absence of any meaningful safety nets apart from kinship and community, most Filipinos simply can't afford to be "unemployed." Given this, official unemployment figures cannot capture the severity of the job crisis in the country.  Hence, it is also revealing to add the five million underemployed and the estimated eight million overseas Filipino workers to these unemployment figures.  Doing this draws attention to how the economy can't provide sufficient livelihood for some 42 percent of the labor force. 

The growing number of workers who are not able to find regular employment in agriculture, industry or overseas are forced to rely on their own devices in order to eke out a living as "own-account workers," mostly in the informal sector.

The ILO estimates that informal sector employment (own-account workers and unpaid family workers) has hovered at around half of total employment in the Philippines over the last 50 years.  Enterprise-based workers account for a mere 10 to 15 percent of total employment according to census figures. These figures reveal that the overwhelming majority of Filipino workers -- especially women -- are idled or else trapped in stagnant, low-productivity informal sector employment. This is characterized by job insecurity, highly irregular and meager incomes, and precarious employment.   In essence, they form an extension of the reserve army of labor. 

Labor feminization

Amid the massive exposure of the country to both manufactured imports and subsidized agricultural products of foreign monopolies, trade liberalization has also encouraged a shift toward the non-tradeable sectors of the economy. Being service-oriented, these are informal sectors where more women have found employment. 

Thus, the increase in female labor force participation rates has outpaced that of men.  This also explains in part why women have now been experiencing lower unemployment rates than men since 1999. 

But these are not "knowledge-based" service industries such as "dot.coms," telecommunications, finance, research and development. Nor are these other high-tech and highly-paid services that have characterized the shift to services in the advanced capitalist countries.

In the Philippines, the population of service workers is largely represented by the semi-proletariat such as hawkers, home workers and other own-account workers. Many of these workers, especially in the rural areas, are in reality, sidelining peasants. 

In other words, the "feminization of the labor force" in the Philippines is more of a "survival strategy" for working-class households whose incomes have been declining and whose jobs are increasingly temporary in nature. This, rather than a response to wider job opportunities for women in the economy.  More members of the household are simply forced to earn a living in order to make ends meet, as well as to spread risks associated with insecure and irregular incomes.

Women also comprise a growing share of migrant workers: from 12 percent of all overseas Filipino workers (OFW) deployed in 1975 to around half last year.  This means an average of 1,600 Filipino mothers and daughters leave the country daily in order to earn a living away from their own families - to work as domestic workers, nannies, caregivers, nurses and even as "entertainers" which is often a euphemism for prostituted women. 

Low-wage employment

Alongside the country's jobless growth pattern, per capita income has remained stagnant.  Likewise, real wages today are barely above their 1980 levels.  After declining in the acute crisis years of 1981 to 1984, real wages rose from their lowest point in 1984 to their peak in 1990 due to the vigorous agitation of the militant labor movement.  But subsequent to the dismantling of the national minimum wage in 1989 and the beginning of the second phase of trade liberalization in 1990, real wages have fallen steadily to a level near to where it was two decades ago.

Today, the daily minimum wage of PhP 250 (or around US$5) in Metro Manila (where it is highest) is less than half the daily cost of living for a family of six (the average size in the Philippines), now estimated at nearly PhP 540 (US$10). 

And women workers earn less than their male counterrparts even within the same occupations.  Among production workers, the ratio of women's wages to men's in 1992 ranged from 42 percent for workers in the 51-65 age bracket, to 89 percent for those in their early 20s.  Women's wages are close to par with men only in those occupations where they form the majority such as clerical and sales positions.  But these are low-wage positions anyway. 

Labor contractualization

Apart from low wages, irregular or atypical forms of employment have been on the rise. This as capitalist-employers dismantle hard-won rights such as job security and minimum wage regulation which they consider as "rigidities" in the labor market.  "Flexible labor," on the other hand, allows capitalists to drive down workers' wages and benefits and preclude workers organizing and collective bargaining. 

Women workers are especially targetted by contractualization. Because women give birth, and are expected to take the lead in home and family-building as dictated by patriarchal convention, women workers have a higher rate of "voluntary turnover." Furthermore, women workers' double burden also restricts their ability to be more active in union action.  This makes them "ideal" contractual employees in the eyes of capitalist employers.

For instance, the country's largest chain of shopping malls, Shoemart, employs over 20,000 workers, 85-90 percent of whom are contractual. Over 90 percent are women. 

Meantime, contractualization does not only affect workers in contractual arrangements.  Unions are objectively undermined when contractual employees -- who are stripped of their rights to form and join unions and to participate in strikes -- comprise a large share of the total workforce. 

History has shown that whenever labor is hobbled by law or practice in the collective struggle for decent jobs, living wages and democratic rights, capitalist-employers are more emboldened to depress overall wage rates and intensify their exploitation of all workers, whether in regular or contractual employment.

Trade union repression

It is therefore no surprise that there are only 3.8 million workers organized in active unions as of 2000. Of these, less than 500,000 are covered by collective bargaining agreements out of 14 million wage and salary workers in the country.  The proportion of wage and salary workers covered by collective bargaining has fallen drastically over the last two decades from 12.7 percent in 1981 to 3.5 percentin 2000, demonstrating globalization's adverse impact on workers' rights. 

Indeed, workers' trade union and democratic rights are systematically and rampantly violated by capitalist-bosses oftentimes with tacit or even open complicity of government officials at various levels. Pursuant to neoliberal globalization, the government enforces a "cheap, docile and flexible labor policy" for the benefit of capitalists but leaves workers biting the dust. 

Amid an ocean of surplus labor, workers who do find jobs are compelled to endure low wages, inhumane working conditions, lack of job security and the practical absence of the right to unionize or to strike.  Through such conditions, global capitalists and their cohorts are able to extract superprofits from the blood and sweat of workers in the Philippines and all over the globe.

The struggle for social justice

For women workers in the Philippines or elsewhere in the world, it is not enough and indeed, is counter-productive to adopt a slogan of "women's participation" if this simply means integrating women in the neoliberal development model. It is grossly misleading to banner the empowerment of women without addressing the economic and political basis of our disempowerment and marginalization in the decision-making structures of society.  This is because the marginalization of women is embedded in the structure of class, race and national oppression.

For instance, the advocacy for women's greater participation in decision-making processes within the same exploitative structures did open up opportunities for women in the Philippines but only for elite women in electoral politics.  We have had two women Presidents in the last two decades, both of whom oversaw the militarization of the countryside that led to an upsurge in human rights violations against peasants and indigenous peoples.  Women, children and the elderly comprise the majority of people victimized and displaced by these incursions.  The current woman President has referred to workers who go on strike as "terrorists." At least five women activists have been killed by military and paramilitary groups since July last year - and these are partial figures.

For as long as those who wield power are the few who monopolize and control the economic resources and the coercive instruments of society, the majority of the world's women who are powerless and exploited will remain so. 

Likewise, electing labor representatives in governments that are captured by foreign monopoly capital aided by the local big bourgeoisie and the landed gentry, will not bring about the emancipation of the working class. 

Indeed, so-called labor parties in power no longer represent the genuine interests of workers.  On the contrary, they have been the key implementors of liberalization and the erosion of hard-won rights and social protections which have wrought untold misery to workers and other poor sectors in society. This at the same time strengthening the stranglehold of corporate power worldwide. 

By extension, simply calling for greater representation of workers in imperialist-controlled international institutions such as the IMF, WB and the WTO will not bring about the liberation and development of oppressed nations.  These institutions are instrumental to maintaining the present international order dominated by a handful of imperialist countries led by the United States.

Rather, our urgent task is to strengthen people's organizations, resistance and collective action towards exposing and opposing imperialist machinations.  This means strengthening and expanding our movements, struggling to circumscribe the powers and influence of transnational corporations, the multilateral institutions and the monopoly capitalists that they represent.  Posted by Bulatlat.com

*Dapulang is the vice-chair of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU-May First Movement). The article is based on a speech she delivered in a recent labor conference in Australia.

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