LABOR WATCH
Contractualization a
Bane to Workers – KMU
“Contractual workers toil under subhuman
conditions while the working conditions of the remaining regular workers
worsen,” said Elmer Labog, chairman of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU or May 1st
Movement).
By Marya G. Salamat
Bulatlat
To get hired in a
large company, some of its veteran unionists were once overheard jokingly
telling one another at a rally that you have to be perfectly
able-bodied–you must have a good set of teeth, a good pair of ears, a
20-20 vision, strong arms and legs, etc. But it doesn’t matter much if
something’s wrong with your gray matter. Or, assuming you started out with
a good brain, they said it’ll get worn out anyway to drone-like near
insanity soon enough.
Gone now are the days
when you’re considered to be stably employed and appreciated if you’re
with a top 1,000-ranking company. A regular worker of a telecommunication
company told Bulatlat, on condition of anonymity, (the management
could look for ways to kick me out of my job,” he confided), “times have
changed for the worse.” Despite their companies’ improving sales and
profitability, they’re more overworked and underpaid now. The number of
regular workers is decreasing even as contractual workers in their midst
are increasing.
“Contractual workers
toil under subhuman conditions while the working conditions of the
remaining regular workers worsen,” said Elmer Labog, chairman of Kilusang
Mayo Uno (KMU or May 1st Movement).
More work, less
pay
According to Mr.
Labog, most medium to large companies in the Philippines have run
successive manpower reduction or early retirement programs in recent years
to open doors to more contractual workers. These companies tempted and/or
coerced their regular employees to avail of “juicy” early retirement
packages. “They don’t have to declare bankruptcy to justify retrenchments;
they just cite the rigors of competition in a globalized world, even if
they practically dominate the industry,” said Labog.
Some of the biggest
examples are San Miguel Corporation, Magnolia/Nestle, Philippine Long
Distance Telephone Company, Meralco, Dole Phils., ShoeMart, Asahi Glass,
and many export-oriented firms in special economic zones.
After shaving
thousands of regular employees off their payroll, large companies employ
contractual workers, sometimes the same workers they retired. The
remaining regular workers are then forced to take on multiple tasks
without a corresponding increase in wages or render overtime work without
overtime pay. In the militant workers’ parlance, it means “exploiting the
workers more intensely.”
“They want to have
their cake and eat it too,” Labog said, referring to large companies’
practice of rehiring the workers whom they previously pushed to retire, at
lower wage rates and scant benefits. “They take advantages of the workers’
experiences without paying benefits for its upkeep,” said Labog.
Especially in jobs where more firm-specific skills are required, retired
workers and previously hired contractuals are rehired repeatedly under new
contracts.
Filipino workers are
now also forced to confront the erosion of some of the labor movement’s
hard-won gains such as the 8-hour working day. The labor department’s
compressed workweek specifically damages the 8-hour labor law, said Labog.
For example, in a big
telecommunications company there’s a “zero overtime policy” even if cable
or phone repairs call for extended working hours. Overtime work is
technically erased through “offsetting.” For a certain working day, a
worker who worked for 16 hours continuously will offset his overtime by
not reporting for work the following day. S/he will not be paid the
additional 30 percent for overtime work nor the night differential
provided by law. In some garments factories, a regular working day is 10
hours long.
For many regular
workers, loss of overtime pay means a hefty drop in their wages. But while
it would seem a boon to contractual workers who are often asked to work
overtime, their take-home pay is still low since their basic pay are low
to begin with.
Labog said, “the
remaining workers are somewhat compelled to work harder and bear the
torrent of multi-tasking, multi-skilling, productivity circles, and
similar setups where they’re constrained to raise their productivity to
avoid being sacked.” Sometimes, Labog added, when regular workers can’t
take it anymore, they’re finally driven to retire early. Those who are
younger and fit for further wear and tear continue to slug it out. They
either become more passive, or “sipsip” (bootlicker), or meek,
while others become militant.
Among the contractual
workers, meanwhile, hard-working docility is a requirement. As Nere
Guerrero of Samahan ng Malayang Kababaihang Nagkakaisa (SAMAKANA or
Association of Free and United Women) has found out in her past four-month
stint as a contractual garments worker, “My coworkers, mostly women, were
resigned to the idea that nothing was worse than not having a job.”
Instead of protecting
workers, the government is actually justifying contractualization, as the
banana plantation workers in Davao found out a couple of years ago. Labor
Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas told them that contractualization is
“necessary because of the current economic slowdown.”
“The real reason
behind many firms’ intensified exploitation of their workers is to
increase profits, said Labog. The medium to large companies who are
resorting to contractualization and multitasking are in fact consistently
listed in RP’s top 1,000 corporations. The Floreindo-owned Tagum
Development Corporation or Tadeco, one of the country's biggest banana
exporters with more than 9,000 workers, is reportedly producing 55 million
boxes of bananas each year, and earning as much as P80.08 billion
annually.
Struggle for
better working conditions
To blunt the
increased exploitation of Filipino workers, militant workers include
contractual workers in their struggle for better wages and working
conditions. Labog said,” labor flexibilization brings down the status of
all workers. As long as employers, especially the large profitable firms,
have extensive privileges to employ contractual workers, they also render
the remaining regular workers open to increased abuse and exploitation.”
At the Polytechnic
University of the Philippines, agency-hired contractual janitors have
successfully formed a union and launched strikes against mass termination
each time their yearly contract expires. Now with members averaging seven
or more years in the job, they are receiving above minimum wages, though
they’re still considered as contractuals. They are still studying how to
deal with relievers, or persons who go to PUP everyday hoping to
substitute for an absent worker.
The National
Federation of Labor Unions (NAFLU), a member federation of KMU, has
experiences in successfully calling for regularization of contractual
workers. It has resolved in its congress to work with contractual workers
in improving labor conditions and to include in collective bargaining
agreements the regularization of existing contractual workers.
“Our local unions
launch mass actions to press for the regularization of contractuals,” said
Antonio Pascual, general secretary of NAFLU. Last year, for instance,
after years of painstaking negotiations and concerted actions, at least
1,500 former contractual workers of Dole Philippines, maker of fruit
preserves and juices based in Mindanao,
were finally regularized.
“While a lot remains
to be done, we are happy to have urged the Dole management to regularize
some of its long-standing contractual workers,” said Labog, “1,500 workers
aren’t big compared to millions of Filipino workers who continue to toil
under shaky employment terms. But so far it is the single biggest group of
Filipino contractual workers who have become regular and permanent through
concerted mass actions. With persistence and despite the Arroyo
government’s drive for labor contractualization, we hope more workers will
soon follow.” Bulatlat
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