Historical roots and prospects of ending precarious employment in the Philippines
Funding information: University of the Philippines-National College of Public Administration and Governance (UP-NCPAG), Grant/Award Number: UP-NCPAG Small Policy Research Grant
Abstract
This article illustrates how major historical and political developments in the Philippines had separately and collectively contributed to the perpetuation of precarious employment and how the labor sector and the state responded and had been affected. These are, among others, the dominance of US imperialism, failure of land reform, fragmentation of the labor movement, rise of global value chains, aborted national industrialization, and hegemony of Anglo-American political and economic thought. The article also proposes that precarious employment be understood as a permutation of the Philippine state's de facto development program of brokering labor required by the political projects of global capitalism and neoliberalism, as can be attested by the history of Philippine labor laws and policies from the time of the Marcos dictatorship to the present. Meaningful change in this miserable situation would therefore not be attained by mere plugging of loopholes in policy as has been the response of government. More importantly, it would require an honest accounting of and antidote to the long-established systems of exploitation that underlie this crisis, which has become one of the most familiar facets of class conflict in recent Philippine history.
1 INTRODUCTION
Sol (not her real name) worked for Middleby Philippines. A subsidiary of an American manufacturing conglomerate of the same name, it manufactures and supplies heavy equipment used in the kitchens of restaurants in different parts of the world. To take advantage of the country's cheap labor, Middleby established its manufacturing base in the Philippines, particularly in the Laguna Technopark, an export processing zone, in the town of Biñan, Laguna in the Southern Tagalog region. Sol entered the factory when she reached 18, the legal age prescribed for formal employment. As a welder, she was responsible for the assembly of industrial-grade fryers, cooktops, and food warmers, among others, which she regularly sees in the fastfood restaurants where she sometimes buys food (Sol, personal communication, September 17, 2018).
Like many of her colleagues, Sol was not given tenure by Middleby or her employment agency even long after she had completed 6 months of service. This clear violation of the Labor Code, which has provisions on the granting of security of tenure (or the right of the worker to be protected from being fired by an employer without a just cause) to an employee after the prescribed probationary period of 6 months, compelled the Middleby workers to report the situation to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). But on the eve of the release of the DOLE labor audit report, which found Middleby to have committed labor-only contracting and thus ordered the regularization and direct hiring of 180 factory workers, the company fired the employees by way of terminating its contract with the manpower agency. This turn of event pushed the workers to hold a sit-down strike, which lasted for a month and was only forced to end when a combined army of private security and state forces stormed the production area and manhandled the striking workers out of the factory (Salamat, 2018; Fightback! News Staff, 2018; Sol, personal communication, 17 September 2018).
Sol's experience mirrors the situation of an estimated 1.3 million workers or close to a third of the total workforce in the Philippines (Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), 2016) hired under what is called non-standard (Serrano, 2014) or precarious employment (Edralin, 2014). Philippine labor studies scholar Melissa Serrano (2014) defines this now rampant arrangement as “characterized by fixed or short-duration employment contract (or non-permanent employment tenure), low wages, limited or absence of social security benefits, work at multiple worksites, low-skill (or in some cases medium-skill) job requirement without career prospect, over-representation of women and young workers, and lack of organization or unionization” and usually comes in the form of “contract work, outsourced work, agency-supplied work, agency-hired work, labor contracting, seasonal work, project-based work, casual work, ‘bogus’ self-employment, etc.” (p.10). Employers usually refer to this scheme as “flexibilization,” which is considered management prerogative. It is even regarded as good practice as it allows companies to easily sever their ties with their workers and save on labor costs in the age of cutthroat market competition. But from the point of view of labor, precarious employment in the Philippines generally means workers are exploited and—with dim prospect of social mobility or even just the absence of smooth transition—burdened by a sense of anxiety. These conditions are specially pronounced in the Philippines where there are no provisions for unemployment insurance and social services such as health have been increasingly inaccessible. The protection provided by a labor union, meanwhile, is absent because workers without tenure are ineligible for union membership. Precarious workers, therefore, live with the perpetual fear of further falling through the cracks with very little or nothing to hold on to.
I attempt to illustrate in this article how major historical and political developments in the Philippines had separately and collectively contributed to the perpetuation of precarious employment and how the labor sector and the state responded and had been affected. These are, among others, the dominance of US imperialism, failure of land reform, fragmentation of the labor movement, rise of global value chains, aborted national industrialization, and hegemony of Anglo-American political and economic thought. In connection with this, I propose that precarious employment be understood as a permutation of the Philippine state's development policy of brokering labor described by Rodriguez (2010) as “a strategy that economic and political elites in the Philippines have designed to deal with the dislocations of neoliberal globalization” (p. 142) that has been maintained through mostly foreign-dictated economic and labor policies from the time of the Marcos Dictatorship up to the present. I argue that any prospect of meaningful change in this miserable situation would therefore not be attained by mere plugging of loopholes in policy that has been the response of government. More importantly, it would require an honest accounting of and antidote to the long-established systems of exploitation that underlie this crisis, which has become one of the most familiar facets of class conflict in recent Philippine history.
2 HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF PRECARIOUS LIVING AND EMPLOYMENT
The enactment of the Labor Code in 1974 is usually marked as the starting point of reckoning in understanding the origins and ramifications of precarious employment in the Philippines. This law, after all, provided legal cover to precarious employment by giving the Labor Secretary the power to permit contracting out of certain jobs under a set of conditions. But to better understand this crisis, I am extending the timeline back to the country's colonial past. It was during this period of several important socioeconomic developments that the groundwork for an economic and political environment hostile to laborers and hostage to the whims of foreign financial capital and oligarchic and colonial interests had begun to take form. From this environment of class exploitation—whose terms are negotiated and calibrated based on economic and political exigencies considered important by the ruling elite or imperialist—also emerged the general conditions of precarity, vulnerability, and uncertainty that hounded the working class through the decades. Furthermore, this accounting is carried out if only to establish the fact that Philippine sociopolitical history and industrial relations are components of a historical narrative steeped in a tradition of betrayal, cooptation, and deception.
2.1 Colonial roots of precarious employment: The Cabo system
Precarious employment, particularly its most prominent form—labor-only contracting—dates back to the Spanish colonization of the Philippines in 1565–1898. During this time, a labor arrangement called the cabo system was used in negotiating and supplying labor (Ibon Foundation, 2017). Middlemen called cabos acted as “the sole labor negotiator for the entire amount to be paid under the then accepted practice of pakyao,” which is “akin to a contract of undertaking on a package-deal basis where the workers perform the job upon the specifications and instructions of the contractor” (Kapunan, 1991, p. 326). Kapunan adds that “as shrewd labor-suppliers, (the cabos) resorted to the unquestioned malpractice of either deducting a percentage fee or by outrightly pegging the amount of wage” (1991, p. 328). Laborers recruited in the cabo system were commonly supplied to “small-time construction companies, maritime companies that hired stevedores, and in haciendas that hired seasonal workers” (Ibon, 2017, p. 2).
The cabo system, Kapunan (1991) argues, fit snugly in the social terrain of colonial Philippines because of the “paternalistic orientation of the Filipinos” and the cabo, because he “determined the economic lifeline of the workers and their families,” was “looked upon like a father of a big family” (p. 327). It is not difficult to imagine, however, that another reason why the exploitative system proliferated is the economic disenfranchisement suffered by the natives under colonial rule. With the arable lands owned and controlled by the Spanish church and state, native Filipinos were cut off from the most available source of livelihood, which is agriculture. To make matters worse, men from the age of 16 to 60 were also subjected to forced labor (polo y servicio) by the Spanish government. Labor under the cabo system, therefore, became a viable option for survival in those difficult times.
When colonial control of the Philippines changed hands from Spain to the United States in 1898, the cabo system was threatened with elimination as the government followed a new doctrine of industrial relations based on fake trade unionism and prohibited the practice of labor-only contracting mastered by the cabos (Ibon, 2017). Under this new system, only workers with membership in a trade union became eligible for employment.
Outwitted and outmaneuvered by a new player who turned out be just as if not more wicked than they were, the cabos slithered into the new labor relations regime disguised as labor leaders. As Ibon Foundation (2017) explains, the cabos “established their own unions even without employers to bargain with and penetrated existing unions to retain their power” and they became the “first batch of notorious labor leaders who, instead of upholding workers’ rights to better wages and employment, functioned as labor suppliers” (p. 2).There exists a union in a given enterprise but, in truth, a company union whose officers were handpicked by the management. The purported collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is in reality a "sweetheart contract" wholly advantageous to the management. The union officers are dummies or are in cahoots with the management commonly understood as kasabwat (accomplice) because they connive to peg the benefits to a minimum or even violate the Labor Code in return for the unwritten understanding only the leaders and the company officials know. (p. 337)
In effect, the cabos as a class disappeared only in name. As agents and enablers of worker exploitation, they continue to exist as corporate functionaries in some labor unions and, in some cases, the bureaucracy. The practice of rounding up people desperate for livelihood—mostly the rural poor—that they originated is also still flourishing today in the business model of manpower agencies supplying labor to enterprises operating in the country and, since the country embraced a labor export policy, to households and short-term work in many places abroad—mostly countries in the Global North. Four centuries after and the fundamental issues that created this culture of desperation remains almost structurally unchanged, making precarious work a familiar and consistent feature of class exploitation from the period of colonialism up to the present.
2.2 Stillborn national industrialization in the 1950s-60s
After a combined 400 years of occupation under three foreign powers, the Philippines in 1946 secured what Ibon Foundation (2017) describes as a “nominal state” of independence it holds until today (para. 8). Thus, it was only able to embark on an industrial path at a “relatively late stage” in the 1950s (Ofreneo & Habana, 1987, p. 5). Within this period, an emergent Filipino industrialist class was able to establish manufacturing enterprises that covered key industries such as food, textile, transport, cement, and steel, among others (Ofreneo & Habana, 1987). Scipes (1999) notes that while this industrialization program largely built by Filipinos “did not benefit the majority of the population at the time, it was a success as an industrialization program by 1960,” and that “from 3% in 1949, almost 18% of the total national income was derived from manufacturing in 1960” (para. 11).
This first wave of industrialization, however, was short-lived and eventually yielded to foreign capital due in part to the failings of the Filipino industrial elite to see beyond their narrow class interests. Temario Rivera, in Landlords and Capitalists: Class, Family, and State in Philippine Manufacturing (1994), explains that the Filipino industrialist class failed at building a strong and sustainable industrial base on which national industrialization can stand because it is dominated by members of landlord families. These landed elites opposed agrarian reform and foreign exchange and import controls—key economic measures that, while necessary and desirable for the country as a whole, would severely affect their business interests tied to land ownership.
This landowning class—whose political clout extended to the halls of the Philippine legislature via congressmen who hail from or were deeply indebted to the landed gentry—rabidly opposed a radical and necessary agrarian reform program that would divest them of their vast landholdings to be able to liberate the peasants from feudal bondage. This first manifested in the overwhelming rejection of the Hardie Report of 1952 in Congress.
Originally proposed by the Americans in line with their own strategic military objective of insulating the Philippines from the rising tide of nationalist and communist liberation movements in Asia and quelling the growing peasant armed rebellion in Luzon, this Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-commissioned economic report strongly recommended reforms patterned after Japan's successful agrarian reform program of which the land tenure specialist Tomas Hardie was also a part. The recommendations included, among others, the abolition of the institution of tenancy and the redistribution of lands to landless farmers.
The failure of land reform ultimately meant persisting poverty for the majority who belonged to the peasantry. And with incomes normally not even enough for the purchase of food, this large section of the population was not able to constitute itself into a consumer base for the clothes, house-building materials, or appliances the industrialists were producing. As Rivera (1994) deftly puts it, “as the main opponents of major redistributive policies like land reform which, if successful, might have created a strong domestic market for manufactured goods, the landed capitalists further undermined the basis for sustained industrial growth” p. 125). Moreover, this condition of landlessness which continues until today provided the fertile soil on which the twin problems of precarious work and poverty established roots, grew tall, and produced numerous branches. A survey of non-regular workers in the national capital conducted by Daenekindt and Gonzales-Rosero (2003), for example, shows that of the 51.7% of those in precarious employment were migrants from the provinces while majority of the remaining 48.7% who were living in Manila and peripheral areas were second generation immigrants whose parent migrated to the cities from the provinces.
The opposition to import and foreign exchange control implemented by the central government to protect and encourage local manufacturers and to immediately address the balance of payment (BOP) crisis that arose from the heavily pro-American Bell Trade Act of 1946, meanwhile, is another story of the local landlord class’ conflicting interests as players in the then emergent Philippine industry and long-time profiteers under feudalism.
It must be noted at this point that the local industrialist class born in the 1950s was not a homogenous lot. It was a mixture of three major interest groups: ethnic-Chinese Filipino businesspeople, non-landed bourgeoisie, and the landed capitalists (Rivera, 1994).
The first two groups were supportive of the import and foreign exchange controls because, first and foremost, it insulated their nascent manufacturing businesses from direct and fierce competition with foreign (largely American) business. The landlord-capitalists, however, faced a quandary because while the opportunity to make money from manufacturing presented itself to them, the foreign exchange control in particular severely affected the profits they had been making from their agro-export businesses based on cash crops like sugarcane, which were then in great demand in the American market.
Nevertheless, it did not take too long for the protectionist measures to be lifted under ignoble circumstances.The structural change in Philippine economy brought about by the launching of industrial promotion policies in 1950 produced a realignment of Filipino social class boundaries; in particular, it gave rise to an industrial bourgeoisie based on business enterprises whose growth was rapidly stimulated by industrialization through the route of import substitution in manufacturing. The ascendancy of this new industrial class in the context of the historical dominance of the landed gentry in the Philippines developed a differentiation in the composition of the Filipino socio-economic upper class as well as of the interests within that class. Such a differentiation, which in effect broadened the economic base of the upper class, naturally had implications for Filipino politics. (p. 41)
True to its predatory character, the U.S.-controlled IMF granted the loan in exchange for the lifting of foreign currency and import controls and devaluation of our currency. From this point on, national industrialization gradually lost traction and steam and the Americans were back in good business. Things would only get better for foreign capital in the years that followed as the economy was slowly but surely reconfigured to suit the interests of American businesses.To protect their share in the Philippine domestic market and get around with the problem of dollar payments, American companies set up local subsidiaries. These subsidiaries were engaged in light manufacturing, mostly of the packaging and assembly type operations. Under such manufacturing process, completely-knocked down parts or components (CKDs) were imported for assembly or re-assembly in the Philippines. In short, CKDs or semi-processed imports simply replaced importation of finished or completely built up products. Thus, the reappearance in the late 1950s and early 1960s of the balance of payments crisis. (p. 8)
These milestones, however, can hardly be counted as substantial improvements if considered in relation to the conditions under which they came about. It is important to emphasize, in particular, that the intensive and eventually successful anti-communist campaign engineered by the Americans and implemented by the Philippine state during this time included the labor front in its field of operation. Along with the defeat of its mostly Luzon-based peasant rebellion, the communist-inspired Hukbalahap—then the strongest and some say almost successful organized opposition to American hegemony—also suffered a major blow with the collapse of its labor arm, the Congress of Labor Organizations (CLO). Constantino and Constantino (1982) describe the CLO as a radical formation responsible for “numerous strikes for higher wages and in support of (most likely socialist) political objectives” (p. 324).Several milestones were reached during this period. In 1948, the Philippines became a member of the ILO [International Labor Organization]. In 1950, a new Civil Code was enacted which included provisions on labor contracts, including a policy statement that labour contracts were not ordinary contracts but imbued with public interest and should, therefore, be regulated by the State through special laws. In the same year, Congress passed a minimum wage law. In 1953, the Philippines ratified ILO Convention Nos. 87 and 98. Immediately thereafter, Congress enacted the Industrial Peace Act (IPA) as the enabling legislation to implement the Conventions. Under the IPA, the policy of the State in regulating industrial relations and employment relations shifted from compulsory arbitration to collective bargaining. (p. 11)
Suffice it to say that the Americans exercised due diligence in covering all fronts and Filipino collaborators more than willing to play along their old master's games were not lacking. In this regard, the Americans were remarkably skilled. As in the case, for instance, of Filipino academics, intellectuals, artists and other members of the intelligentsia, labor leaders were offered all-expense paid trips to and schooling in the United States to get them acquainted with American labor education.…the vacuum left by the CLO had to be filled, and in a way suitable to American investment. The overall objective was to reorient the labor organizations away from political unionism and toward economic unionism, and to pattern Philippine labor unions after those of the US. Through strict regulation and supervision, left-leaning labor leaders were immobilized or removed. At the same time, a program of cooptation was initiated through the enactment of American-inspired labor laws such as the Minimum Wage act of 1951 and the Industrial Peace Act of 1954. The latter was drafted with the technical assistance of the Mutual Security Agency's labor division in Manila. Along with other American labor practices, the concept of collective bargaining was introduced. The adoption of the collective bargaining process insured the shift of the trade union movement from political to economic unionism. This also effectively fragmented the labor movement since each union concerned itself only with a particular employer rather than joining other unions in concerted national action for the adoption of certain policies beneficial to all. There was no longer any opportunity for militancy. (pp. 324–325)
The spirit of cooptation, fragmentation and capitulation conceived in this era would haunt the labor movement long afterwards and would become a crucial factor in the creation of the climate of precarity and depression within which employment and living in general continue to exist. The prevailing discourse of economic unionism and the fragmentation (sometimes on account of clear and irreconcilable ideological lines) of the labor movement ensured that, in the absence of a broad and unified labor movement, precarious employment will be normalized and can only be challenged up to the point that its terms are partially negotiated and adjusted, without its fundamental features of injustice being discredited and dismantled.
2.3 The Marcos years
After around a decade of promising economic performance, the Philippines slid back to a state of economic disequilibrium. Trade and BOP deficits continued, thereby forcing the state to get more loans from IMF-World Bank (WB) which in turn imposed its economic recipe, known officially as structural adjustment program (SAP), on the debtor country. As Ofreneo and Habana (1987) relate, “a gradual and piecemeal reorientation of the industrial policy towards export orientation and trade liberalization” (p. 10) was undertaken. This road to perdition began in the early 1960s during the presidency of Diosdado Macapagal but the highway to hell was paved by the dictator Marcos in 1972, the same year he put the nation under Martial Law.
Martial Law is normally remembered in the Philippines as a period of tyranny and fascism, notorious for repression of free speech, killings, and widespread human rights violations. The bloodstained legacy of Marcos, however, also includes the bludgeoning and all-out surrender of our economic sovereignty. State-sponsored violence, in a way, possibly functioned as a shock treatment whose effect was to put the country in a state of paralysis and disorientation suitable for the imposition of neoliberal political and economic experiments. Naomi Klein (2007) refers to this modus as the shock doctrine.
The shift to labor-intensive, export-oriented economic program was touted by the IMF-WB as an antidote to the unemployment problem ailing the Philippine economy. In reality, however, the scheme was the preliminary operationalization of what Lauesen and Cope (2015, para. 6) call the “imperialist globalization of production” that ushered in the North–South relationship characterized by the integration of low-wage proletariat (primarily in and from the South) in the machinery of global capitalism and the relocation of production chains to “places where the cost of production, infrastructure, and tax laws are optimal for capital” starting in the 1970s (para. 6). In the Philippines, this project was first realized in the Bataan Export Processing Zone (BEPZ) created on the strength of Presidential Decree 66 (PD 66) issued 2 months after the imposition of Martial Law (Scipes, 1999). Privileges enjoyed by foreign corporations in the export processing zones includeWhen Martial Law was declared in September 1972, the technocrats and the IMF-WB all of a sudden found themselves free of the major political obstacles to an accelerated orientation of the economy towards labor-intensive, export-oriented, agro-industrial strategy…Gerardo P. Sicat, the leading proponent of the new industrial philosophy, was appointed director-general of the newly-established National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). In the absence of a legislature, NEDA was given a freehand to overhaul and re-orient the economy towards labor-intensive, export-oriented vision of industrial development. (p. 11)
Lauesen and Cope (2015) state that the “South's industrialization came to provide a (temporary) solution to capitalism's economic and political malaise in the 1970s, manifested on one side by a declining rate of profit, the oil crisis, and pressure from the labor movement in the North for ever-higher wages and, on the other, by the national liberation struggles of the South” (para. 6). The authors underscore further that “the South's industrialization was not a concession to its demands” and that “rather than a step towards a more equal world, it has resulted in a deepening of imperialist relations on a global scale” (para. 6). This new episode eventually signaled an intensification of imperialist plunder of the Philippines following an increased demand for industrial labor in addition to raw materials. Scipes (1999) notes that industrial activity in the Philippines in this period shifted from “traditional agricultural exports to non-traditional, labor-intensive manufacturing exports, particularly in garments and manufacturing” (para. 29). This shift to labor-intensive manufacturing in the service of foreign capital could be counted as a turning point in the history of the Philippine state's policy of brokering labor within the ambit of imperialist globalization. In Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World, Rodriguez illuminates on “how and why citizens from the Philippines have come to be the most globalized workforce on the planet” through research and analysis of the Philippine labor migration/export policy (Rodriguez, 2010, p. 141). I would like to add to that compelling argument that Filipinos in the pioneering export manufacturing industry in the 1970s, although not sent abroad, can be considered a subcategory of this transnational labor.permission for 100 percent foreign ownership; permission to impose a lower minimum wage than in Manila; tax exemption privileges, including tax credits on domestic capital equipment, tax exemptions on imported raw materials and equipment, exemption from the export tax and from municipal and provincial taxes; priority to Central Bank foreign exchange allocations for exports; low rents for land and water; government financing of infrastructure and factory buildings, which could then be rented out or purchased by companies at a low price; and accelerated depreciation of fixed assets. (Bello, Kinley, & Elinson, 1982 as cited in Scipes, 1999, para. 20)
The decade 1975–1986 was actually a time of intense social crisis and economic difficulty for most Filipinos. The unemployment rate was falling in the early years of the Marcos regime—from 7.1% in 1966 to 3.9% in 1975. But this reversed in the mid-1970s to rapidly rise back to 7.9% in 1980. The prices of goods and services also soared with the 6.8% inflation rate in 1975 almost doubling to 12.1% in 1980.
The failure—at least as far as the Filipino masses’ interests are concerned—of the SAP-imposed industrial strategy, moreover, highlights an important issue which is at the heart of the industrial relations crisis: cheap labor. The structuring of the Philippines as a physical site of manufacturing operations in the international division of labor is premised on its standing as a source of cheap labor. This economic policy orchestrated by the Philippines’ neocolonial master ultimately occasioned the metamorphosis of precarious employment as a development program in response to the imperatives of the emerging political projects of neoliberalism and corporate globalization.The situation was worst in the 1981–1985 period: unemployment averaged nearly 11% including a high of 12.6% in 1985; inflation averaged nearly 20% including, also in 1985, a high of nearly 30 percent. By 1985, anywhere from two-thirds to three-fourths of some 54 million Filipinos were poor; at least 27 million Filipinos or up to half (49%) of the population were in extreme poverty (i.e. those deemed “poor” according to the low official poverty line). (para. 10–11).
Determined to protect what he considered as the country's most important asset, Ferdinand Marcos created the legal framework for precarious employment arrangements using the legislative powers he usurped from Congress. He issued Presidential Decree 442 or the Labor Code of the Philippines on Labor Day, May 1, 1974. Despite its seemingly pro-labor title, PD 442 is regarded by labor activists as fundamentally designed to suppress labor rights on account of its legalization and promotion of precarious employment arrangements (as stipulated in articles 106–109) designed primarily for the benefit of the export-oriented industry. Marcos furthermore, saw to it that he followed to the letter the wishes of his patrons by ensuring that the labor is not only cheap but also docile. So after PD 442 came in 1975 Presidential Decree 823, which prohibited strikes in what is said to be “vital industries.” Bello et al. (1982) explain that “in theory, ‘vital industries’ included only export-oriented manufacturing concerns, public utilities, transport and communication firms, hospitals, schools, food processors and distributors and banks” but “in practice, it encompassed practically all industries” (p.142).
The Philippines under Marcos also actively began the export of labor to markets abroad, particularly in the Middle East. The supply of manual laborers required by the booming economy of the oil-producing region offered a solution to the problem of unemployment created by Marcos’ failing economic program. By 1980, the Philippines already supplied about 200,000 workers overseas, which doubled after only 6 years (Asis, 2017). Contract-based and short-term employment in foreign land has since then become an accepted—preferred even because overseas workers earn so much more than their counterparts back home—social reality and, in effect, further established the inevitability of non-regular employment in the Filipinos’ collective political imagination. This band-aid solution is a legacy of Marcos that survives until today as underscored by the fact that an estimated one million workers join the Filipino diaspora each year to escape the plague of unemployment and poor wages in the country. A tenth of the total population is now working overseas. Like local precarious work, Marcos institutionalized exported labor with “Presidential Decree 442, which created three state agencies, the Overseas Employment Development Board (OEDB), the Bureau of Employment Services (BES), and the National Seaman's Board (NSB)” that became responsible “for the development, promotion, regulation, and implementation of the labor export program” (Rodriguez, 2010, p. 12).
Marcos’ anti-worker political designs did not go unchallenged. This was, after all, the 1970s—an era in Philippine history recognized for the surge of nationalist and revolutionary praxis. The First Quarter Storm, a series of anti-fascists and anti-imperialists actions, and the rebirth of the Communist Party of the Philippines are among the events that signaled the beginning of this tumultuous period of social awakening. As in the case of the earlier anti-colonial uprisings against Spain, it was the youth (largely university-based) who ignited the spark of the uprising but the blaze of revolutionary spirit soon spread to other sectors, including the working class. It is from the ranks of this enlightened working class that a militant labor front would, once more, emerge.
The La Tondeña workers strike of 1975 is considered as the first public demonstration of this labor movement decidedly opposed to the state's discourse of industrial relations. Some 800 workers demanding the regularization of 600 contractual employees and 500 more “casuals” or “extras” went on strike on October 24, 1975. The campaign, despite being supported by students, the immediate community where the factory was located, and church people, lasted only 2 days after state forces rounded up and arrested protesters. But it continues to be commemorated until today because of the political legacy it left. It was the first labor strike that took place during Martial Law when such action was prohibited and in so doing “shattered the repressive silence that was prevailing at the time and was taken as the signal fire that was followed by many other workers’ strikes and people's protests” (Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), 2014). The La Tondeña workers also managed to win partial victory as the management conceded to regularize 300 workers (Partido Manggagawa (PM), 2015).
The La Tondeña strike also made incalculable impact on the labor sector as it was the first to articulate loud and serious opposition to precarious employment, advocated for greater and critical social engagement of the working class and, in the process, gave birth to a new tradition in Filipino labor unionism. In contrast to the American-sponsored labor unions which dominated the sector throughout the 1960s, this new current championed by a radicalized faction of the Philippine labor movement directly challenged the paradigm of economic unionism and, more importantly, advanced the discourse of national industrialization, land redistribution, and fight against US neocolonialism as indispensable aspects of the struggle of both the working class and the Filipino masses. In other words, these workers began to see themselves as part of a bigger social movement and, as Bitonio (2012) and Sibal (2004) point out, even began to embrace socialism. A popular protest chant formulated during this time clearly conveys this very idea of the working class’ role in the larger goal of social emancipation: “Uring Manggagawa, Hukbong Mapagpalaya! (The Working Class is the Army of Liberation!).” Kim Scipes (2003), referencing the experience of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU, May First Movement)—the militant labor center that emerged from this tradition of Filipino working class movement—calls this particular ideological direction as “social movement unionism” (para. 31). Scipes elaborates that social movement unionism “recognizes that the struggles for control over workers’ daily work life, pay and conditions are intimately connected with and cannot be separated from the national socio-political-economic situation” (para. 31).
This turn of events certainly did not bode well for Marcos’ economic policy and personal intentions to stay in power. Thus, he was quick to respond to the growing workers’ movement. So quick, in fact, that it took him barely 2 months to pull off a stunt aimed at undermining the burgeoning militant labor front. Perhaps taking inspiration or advice from his American patrons, he implemented the same divide-and-conquer tactic employed by the US during their cooptation and pacification campaign of the labor movement in the 50s. Marcos strongly backed in December 1975 the establishment of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP). In its website, the TUCP describes itself as the “the biggest confederation of labor federations in the Philippines founded on December 14, 1975 by 23 labor federations which saw the necessity and importance of uniting themselves into a strong and dynamic labor center” (TUCP, n.d., para. 1). Its current spokesperson Allan Tanjusay (personal communication, August 8, 2018), in an interview for this article, however, was candid enough to share what is known in labor movement circles: Marcos supported the TUCP because he wanted to champion a moderate labor group to discredit the militants.
Marcos’ gambit paid off. As Bitonio (2012) remarks, this development resulted in the “polarization of labor unions” (p. 13). The TUCP, furthermore, “became the labor center to represent labor in the tripartite system of labor relations in the country under the period of labor repression” (Sibal, 2004, p. 30). This strategic victory for Marcos can explain not only why precarious employment continued to be the norm but also why Marcos’ despotic rule lasted a full 21 years. With the prospect and promise of a broad, united and militant labor front committed to broad social goals (i.e., anti-fascist and anti-imperialist) aborted yet again, the opposition to the U.S.-backed Marcos dictatorship did not reach critical mass at least until the dictator became too violent and corrupt even for the standards of the mercenary armed forces, factions of the oligarchy not favored by Marcos, and the US. He was ousted from office via military coup d’ état and what is popularly known in the country as the Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) People Power Revolution (both supported by the US) in February 1986.
2.4 The ascendancy of neoliberal globalization in the post-EDSA decades
Despite strong evidence of the catastrophic effects of her predecessor's development program and the great opportunity to chart a new and radically different direction for the Philippine economy after the ouster of Marcos, the so-called revolutionary government of Corazon Aquino chose to continue the same program of export-oriented industrialization leveraged still on the country's supply of cheap labor. Although certainly scandalous and disappointing, this incident is hardly surprising if we take into account the political milieu in which it came to pass.
Confronted with the burden of paying off huge debts incurred by Marcos and other fiscal problems that resulted from that, the Philippine government under Aquino was forced to borrow money from the IMF in exchange for the same conditions imposed by the creditor on Marcos. Appeals were made for Aquino to repudiate fraudulent and onerous loans made by Marcos but she ignored such calls. Likewise, President Aquino vetoed a congressional bill that sought to repeal a Marcosian law that decrees the automatic allocation of a huge amount of the national budget for debt-servicing (Ocampo, 2011).
Thus, while civil liberties curtailed during Martial Law were restored during the term of Aquino, the economic and political structure that engendered cheap, flexible, and docile labor was left intact. The same labor code, therefore, governed industrial relations under Aquino's term. Much to the dismay of the labor movement, Aquino also “decided not to replace but simply sanitize repressive labor laws Batas Pambansa 130 and Batas Pambansa 227 and refused to completely restore the right to strike” (Scipes, 1996, p.43).1
Leading the implementation of the Aquino administration's labor non-reforms was Franklin M. Drilon, who was appointed Labor Secretary in 1987 after original appointee Augusto Sanchez—a progressive lawyer and an anti-dictatorship activist—was relieved from his post by Aquino upon the behest of military men who suspected him of being a communist and the business sector who found Sanchez to be “leaned too much on the side of the labor” (Bantayog ng mga Bayani, 2016). Prior to his appointment in the Aquino cabinet, Drilon served as governor of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP). As a confederation of corporate enterprises that wields strong influence on the government, ECOP has consistently and successfully opposed many demands of the labor sector, particularly as regards much-needed increase in wages.
Writing about the experience of the KMU in organizing in this period of dashed hopes and missed opportunities, Scipes (1996) provides an accounting of the factors that could explain why President Aquino acted against the interests of the working class and the Filipino masses in general. One of these is the peculiar situation of Aquino as an accidental politician with no “political apparatus that she could call her own” (p. 42). She also happened to be a scion of one of the “wealthiest landowning families and is apparently very conservative personally” (p. 42). Her cabinet and advisers, meanwhile, were dominated by reactionaries from the military and “free market advocates” who “opposed any debt repudiation and relaxation of labor laws, and wanted privatization of government-owned businesses” (p. 41). Furthermore, the coup attempts from restive elements of the military did not help Aquino cultivate a progressive stance because it established the real danger of a military takeover. Under these circumstances, it became easy for Aquino to seek political capital from and give concessions to the same patrons that supported Marcos. Initially, this strategy was meant to primarily secure loans to get the “economy moving again after years of economic decline” (Scipes, 1996, p. 41). But it became a default economic program for the rest of Aquino's term. The sense of threat and anxiety this combination of problems brought is also heightened by the fact that, from 1953 to 1973, there is evidence of the connivance of transnational corporations and foreign agencies like the CIA in “overthrowing or destabilizing governments which dare to challenge private foreign interest” (Constantino, 1979, p. 59). What little amount of progressive potential Aquino could have possessed had thus been swept away by the waves of right-wing and imperialist currents. To borrow the words of David Gilmour and Roger Waters (Gilmour & Waters, 1975), Aquino traded or was forced to trade “cold comfort for change” (2:06–08).
The Aquino years also coincided with the rise of neoliberalism under the leadership of Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in Britain. This doctrine ushered in the ascendancy of the market/corporations in imposing its preferred economic policies. This Anglo-American domination of global economic and political affairs, furthermore, gave birth to what Miyoshi (1998) calls “transnational corporatism,” a phenomenon characterized by the collaboration of the business sector, government and major lending institutions like the IMF-World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in creating a conducive environment in developing countries to accommodate huge surpluses of financial capitals from industrialized countries like the United States and Japan.
Ultimately, this meant the preservation of a political environment favorable to flexible and precarious employment whose legal infrastructure Marcos already built. Hence, not a single amendment was done to the Labor Code as far as the original provisions on subcontracting are concerned. Another labor policy, however, took effect in 1989 that spelled a major blow to the prospect of building workers solidarity. Republic Act 6715 granted the President and the Secretary of Labor the power to issue an assumption of jurisdiction (AJ) on labor disputes. KMU criticizes this particular provision of the law as it “allows the Labor secretary to order workers to immediately go back to work or be laid off, and provides capitalists with the basis to file criminal charges against workers and to bring the military and police over to the workplace” and thus function as “a violent instrument against workers’ most potent weapon in the workplace, the strike” (2014 as cited in Salamat, 2014, para. 13). Republic Act 6715 is more popularly known in the labor movement as the Herrera Law since it was authored by known Aquino ally Ernesto Herrera. Before becoming senator, Herrera built his political career as president and secretary general of the moderate and government-backed TUCP.
In sum, Aquino's so-called revolutionary government managed only to revolutionize the Philippines’ transformation into what David Harvey (2005) terms as a “neoliberal state” whose central role “was to facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation on the part of both domestic and foreign capital” (p. 7). Contributing to the success of this anti-democratic experiment, ironically, is the mythology that depicts Aquino as an international icon of democratic restoration and spearhead of what is touted as a “bloodless revolution.” To date, Aquino is the only Philippine President to have been chosen Person of the Year by Time and invited to address the general assembly of the United Nations.
A more aggressive neoliberalist drive took place during the term of Fidel V. Ramos—one of Marcos’ most trusted architect and implementer of Martial Law before he defected and became Aquino's defense minister—starting in 1992. Under Ramos’ presidency, the Philippine government implemented the triple neoliberal measures of trade liberalization, privatization, and deregulation that provided greater impetus for maintaining a labor relations regime hostage to the demands of the export-oriented economic development program. Ramos’ flagship economic program titled Philippines 2000 openly declared that its main thrust was the campaign to attract foreign investments. This is highlighted, in particular, by the Philippines’ joining the World Trade Organization in 1995. Done by the Ramos government without consultation with the labor sector, this policy cemented the position of the Philippines’ role in corporate globalization as a source of “cheap, docile and contractual labor” (Daenekindt & Gonzales-Rosero, 2003, p. 7).
Immediately, there was a frenzy in the establishment of export processing zones and industrial estates that serve as overseas manufacturing bases of foreign corporations. Most of these are found in the regions bordering the national capital like Southern Tagalog immediately to the south. In addition to tax incentives and cheap labor, these economic and industrial enclaves were marketed by the national government as “no union” zones to lure foreign investors. This was implemented on the ground with the help of local government units which facilitated the recruitment of workers who were preferably without experience in union organizing (Daenekindt & Gonzales-Rosero, 2003, p. 7). Alongside came the surge in precarious employment. Cristobal and Resurreccion (Cristobal & Resureccion, 2014) report that “from 14% to 15% between the years 1990–1994, the share of contractual workers in enterprise-based employment had jumped to 21.1% as far back as 1997” (p. 343). Also by this period, more than 70% of total Philippine exports are from mostly foreign-owned industrial conglomerates (Scipes, 1999).
In Ramos’ last year in office, Labor Secretary Leonardo Quisumbing also issued Department Order (DO) 102 series of 1997, which prohibited labor-only contracting but “affirmed permissible contacting and other flexible employment arrangements and recognized the legitimacy of trilateral employment relations ‘for the purpose of increasing efficiency and streamlining efficiency and streamlining operations essential for every business to grow in an atmosphere of free competition’” (Ibon Foundation, 2017, p. 3).
With DO 10 in effect, precarious employment further went on an upsurge under the term of President Joseph Estrada. Labor center Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (SENTRO) reports that DO 10 effected the rise of “employment through agencies” and “proliferation of short-term and precarious employment arrangements,” ultimately causing “countless positions which had previously been occupied by directly-hired regular employees” to be given “to workers hired by agencies” (SENTRO, 2017, para. 16). Calculating data from DOLE, Daenekindt and Gonzales-Rosero (2003) estimate that by 2001, the number of contractual workers peaked at “6.34 million or 43% of wage and salary workers” (p. 19). The devastating effect on labor organizing is similarly staggering. Government data show that the huge drop in union membership happened during this period. From 26.7% in 2001, union membership plummeted to 10% in 2002 and stayed below or just slightly above that mark in the years that followed (PSA, 2015). This series of attacks eventually riled up workers and “stirred massive protests in the country” (Ibon Foundation, 2017, p. 3). The labor movement would eventually form part of the people's uprising that ousted Estrada over cases of corruption and incompetence in January 2001. This movement called EDSA People Power 2 delivered to then Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the presidency.
Macapagal-Arroyo's term of office, furthermore, added another milestone in the Philippine state's business of brokering precarious work. This major development manifested in three ways that strengthened the position of Arroyo and, by extension, the Philippines in neoliberal globalization. The first is in the “significant shift” in the rhetoric of promoting migrant labor (Serquiña, 2016, p. 208). In May 2003, Macapagal-Arroyo professed that “Not only am I the head of state responsible for a nation of 80 million people. I'm also the CEO [chief executive officer] of a global Philippine enterprise of 8 million Filipinos who live and work abroad and generate billions of dollars a year in revenue for our country (Rodriguez, 2010, ix as cited in Serquiña, 2016, p.8).” Quoting Rodriguez (2010, p. x) Serquiña argues that “this declaration of authority provides a picture of Macapagal-Arroyo as an entrepreneur, the ideal neoliberal subject, who rationally maximize[d] her country's competitive advantage in the global market” (Serquiña, 2016, p. 209).As a result, regular employment continued to dwindle and a whole industry of “service contracting” blossomed. The evils of DO 10 returned with a vengeance, with employers evolving new ways to prevent workers from attaining regular status. Many agencies were seen to disguise themselves as “cooperatives” which prevents unionization and further confuses the availability of workers’ right to wages and basic conditions of work (para. 20)
The second condition that demonstrates this intensified effort in labor brokerage is the rise of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. Under the BPO system, corporations based in the Global North are able to “farm out routine or non-core office functions to call centers or back offices in developing countries which “offer round the clock services that include the handling of complaints and inquiries of customers abroad, providing them with technical support via the internet, and rendering medical and legal transcription services” (Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research, Inc. (EILER), 2012, p. 92). The condition of having a significant population of college-educated and English-speaking population desperate to land a job made the Philippines a top contender in the bid to provide this human resource demand.
Touted by Macapagal-Arroyo as the “sunshine industry” because of its capacity to generate jobs and income that the government was unable accomplish due to its failed economic programs, the BPO industry became a new site of precarious work where mostly young professionals were herded to what EILER (2012) calls “modern-day sweatshops in the service sector” (p. 1). Although relatively better paid and to a certain degree better protected in terms of security of tenure and other benefits than their counterparts in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, BPO workers share the same burden of performing long working hours and “highly stressful work that comes from the unreasonable metric valuations, and from irate customers” and other indignities such as “mandatory overtime and work on holidays, restroom breaks recorded by management against the productivity” and tardiness and absenteeism being “considered ‘grave misconduct’” when these infractions are normally “caused by work-induced stress and illnesses related to work” (EILER, 2012, p. 147). More importantly, BPO workers also easily fall under the same genus of precarious workforce on account of the general and widespread absence of unionization among their ranks since sites of BPO operations are normally established in export processing zones (EPZs) where an “unwritten ‘no union, no strike’” policy exists (EILER, 2012, p. 145). There has been, so far, just one group of workers who managed to organize themselves into what could have been the first labor union in the Philippine BPO industry—the United Employees of Alorica (UEA)—if only the BPO company recognized the organization as a union and not resorted to filing of charges against its leaders and members following a picket protest to air legitimate worker complaints (J. Siwa, personal communication, May 17, 2020).
Taken as a whole, these three episodes indicate that as far as responding to the neoliberal imperative of brokering labor is concerned, the Philippines can deliver and predictably more so under the leadership of a neoliberal economics tactician and university professor like Macapagal-Arroyo.From 2011 to 2009, at least 95 trade unionists, workers, and labor advocates had been killed. The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights in the same period documented at least 1,757 cases of various forms of human rights violations against 158,909 individuals. The Arroyo administration has employed the use of the military and state forces to disperse strikes (as in the case of workers’ strikes in Hacienda Luisita in 2004). The military and other state forces widely harassed and vilified independent trade unions. Criminal charges were filed against unionists and labor advocates in order to undermine the trade union movement. (p. 59)
After almost a decade of incumbency rocked by issues of corruption, election fraud and human rights violations, Arroyo was succeeded by Benigno Aquino III (son of Corazon Aquino) in 2010. Like Macapagal-Arroyo after Estrada and his mother after Marcos, Aquino III kicked off his term in an atmosphere of optimism and openness to prospects of change. Less than a year in office and due to continuous pressure from the labor movement, Aquino III's Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz issued DO 18-A in March 2017. As its name suggests, DO 18-A contains amendments to DO 18, which are mainly additional requirements for employment agencies who wish to supply workers to companies. Most notable of these is the capitalization requirement of at least Php 3 million (USD 60,000; Ibon Foundation, 2017, p. 3).
Far from ending contractualization, this is but an exercise in retooling contractualization as an institution at that precise historical stage when service providers have amassed just enough assets to level up.
At this historical stage, manpower agencies and cooperatives, like members of the Philippine Association of Legitimate Service Contractors (PALSCON) and Asiapro Cooperative, have already perfected the art of contracting. They can boast of sufficient capital or investment in order to ensure that contractual workers are entitled to minimum wage and all legally mandated benefits.
Needless to say, the corporate globalization and neoliberal agenda engineered during the time of Marcos, given considerable legitimacy in Aquino's, and driven in full speed by Ramos was accepted without question by the succeeding governments despite their failure to bring equitable prosperity. Latest data of government show that the poverty incidence is at 25.6%. Corresponding to an estimated total of 25 million people, this is considered the highest number of people of the same country living in poverty in the ASEAN region (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2017).However, these changes do not spell an end to exploitation. They merely seek to end primitive exploitation to pave the way for modern exploitation at a time when the exploiters can already afford to embrace modern means. What appears as a progressive advance from less to stricter regulation by the State simply coincides with the actual material development of service providers. (para. 35–37)
In terms of labor and employment, the effect has been likewise detrimental. The share of non-regular/precarious employment in total employment from 2000 to 2010 stayed in the range of 25–27% (Marasigan & Serrano, 2014). This figure climbed to 29% in 2016 (PSA, 2016).
The rate of unemployment also remains a pressing concern. Government data show that the unemployment rate from 1986 to 2005 has not gone below 8%, peaking at the range of 10–11% during the worldwide recession in the early 2000s. According to latest statistics, the unemployment rate just dramatically dropped to the 5–7% range starting 2006 but this is contentious. Independent research think tank Ibon Foundation points to the fact that the government statistical agency in charge of the national census adopted a radically different methodology/definition in determining unemployment starting 2005. This new methodology, seen by labor formations to be misleading, excluded millions in computing the unemployment rate (Melencio, 2010). However, even after some statistical acrobatics, the significantly lower unemployment rate still registered as the highest in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. This situation significantly contributed to the rise of precarious employment. Because as jobs are becoming scarcer, it became easier for companies to recruit workers who would settle for low standards of employment instead of not having any source of income at all. If we base it on latest employment statistics, it would appear that for every nonregular worker, there are three unemployed persons who would possibly (and perhaps happily) take the job (PSA, 2015, 2016). From the time of Spanish colonial occupation up to the present, the pool of willing and desperate candidates for precarious work never seem to run dry.
Correspondingly, the rise of precarious employment caused a sharp decline in labor union membership. Ofreneo (2017), citing data from Labor Education Research Network, reports that from 26.2% in the 1980s, union density in 2013 dropped to 8.5%. Latest PSA data, meanwhile, give a more depressing figure of only 6.5% for 2016 (PSA, 2017).
This situation, in turn, made it easier for the precarization of labor to continue amidst an environment of lack of political organization and unity among labor organizations. Although there were serious and sustained efforts from different labor formations to address the problem, this only resulted in minor concessions that did little to stop, much less reverse it. Since 1997, the Labor Department has issued five department orders in response to the clamor of the labor sector to end precarious employment. But as illustrated earlier, these legal measures merely calibrated the terms by which companies may be allowed to employ workers without granting them tenure, such as outsourcing necessary and essentials jobs to manpower agencies which are likewise unwilling to give workers the complete set of employment rights enshrined in the Constitution. And whatever provisions of the laws regarding regularization are violated with impunity.
Nevertheless, an extraordinary opportunity for change surfaced in the period leading to the presidential election in May 2016. Security of tenure became a top campaign issue; the frontrunner and eventual breakaway winner, Rodrigo Duterte, adopted the demand of the workers to end precarious employment as one of his campaign commitments. Around this time, labor formations with long history of discord also began to reach out to one another to form a bigger labor front and rally behind a single banner calling for the end of “endo.” “Endo” is a shortened and colloquial term for “end of contract.” This refers to the corporate practice of terminating the contracts of employees before the sixth month of service to avoid mandatory regularization. Although just one of the many forms, the term has become the most popular name by which precarious work has been identified and opposed.
3 PROSPECT OF CHANGE?
The electoral victory of President Duterte and the newfound unity among different labor groups marshaled a critical juncture in the protracted struggle of the workers against precarious employment. Upon assumption to power, Duterte instructed his Labor Secretary, Silvestro Bello, to address the concerns of the labor sector. Bello, in turn, launched an intensified and unprecedented (in terms of scale) campaign to run after violators of rules against labor only contracting. DOLE released in May 2018 a partial list of top 20 business establishments found or are suspected to be in the practice of labor-only contracting and ordered the regularization of 76,000 workers (CNN Staff, 2018). The list, which included some of the biggest and most profitable local and multinational corporations, further confirmed what has been widely known all along: precarious employment has become a social epidemic.
Fed up with the gamut of issues that arise from their nature of work and emboldened by a new popular discourse on precarious employment, workers then took the opportunity to launch collective actions to assert their rights. Requests for inspections were filed in DOLE. Filing of notices of strike increased and actual strikes and similar actions broke out in factories. The disputes on employee regularization in corporate giants like telecommunications company PLDT, fastfood empire Jollibee and condiments conglomerate NutriAsia became topics of national conversations, especially in social media (Medenilla, 2018). For the first time in post-Marcos history, the workers, contractuals in particular, were getting the limelight. After so many years too, long-time divided labor groups were mending their differences. Contractuals had also begun organizing themselves and were welcomed to the fold of labor unions.
Duterte and labor officials, moreover, began a series of meetings with labor leaders to explore possible courses of action. This led first to the issuance of Department Order 174 in March 2017. But as in previous DOs, 174 contained nothing more than cosmetic changes in the guidelines on labor contracting. As a matter of fact, it even made matters worse as it resurrected the term “permissible contracting” scrapped on the strength of DO 18. Despite testimonies from workers about the abuse of the concept of “labor cooperatives” as a legitimate labor provider during consultations DOLE conducted, DO 174 also went only as far as prohibiting what it calls “in house” cooperatives. These cooperatives are often used as “dummies” by the same companies to which the labor is supplied (SENTRO, 2017, para. 16).
Following this new episode of disappointment, Duterte was forced to respond with the issuance of Executive Order (EO) 51.3 Released on Labor Day 2018, EO 51 orders the prohibition of all forms of “illegal contracting.” Labor groups, however, were still left disappointed, pointing out that the EO lacks the sincere intent and actual capacity to put an end to “endo.” After all, it contains nothing new and different from previous Department Orders of DOLE that retain provisions on government-sanctioned labor contracting and subcontracting arrangements that had been exploited by companies.
Duterte eventually admitted that his EO could do little to address the demands of the labor groups and thus stated that, as an alternative measure, he would certify as urgent the Security of Tenure (SOT) Bill pending in the Senate. The actual certification would come 5 months later, in September 2018. In his letter to Senate President Vicente Sotto, Duterte stressed the urgent need for Senate Bill (SB) 1826 or “an Act Strengthening Workers’ Right to Security of Tenure” to lift the Filipinos workers from the “quagmire of poverty and underemployment.” A salient feature of this proposed bill, at least in its original draft, was that it prohibited a company to serve as subcontractor/contractor for jobs in another company even if it has substantial capitalization.
In general, labor groups considered this a welcome development but some expressed fear that the final version of the bill would be watered-down due to the influence of strong lobby groups in both the Senate and Congress. As it happened, those who were not optimistic about the SOT Bill were right. The final version of the Bill turned out to be an articulation of the same discourse on labor subcontracting found in previous DOLE department orders. It is an improvement only in the sense that, again, it imposes stricter rules on but still institutionalizes and encourages trilateral relationship whose language and discourse are used by the companies to their advantage. The biggest disappointment (and surprise), however, came not in the passage of the bill but in its rejection by the President (who certified it as urgent) on account of what he called the need to consider the welfare of the business sector. A day before it was to become enacted without executive imprimatur, President Duterte vetoed the SOT bill, which labor groups have called weak and toothless but which the business sector already considers a bane and threat to their existence.
4 CONCLUSION
Although new efforts have subsequently been made to pass a new and, hopefully, better law against precarious employment in Congress, the research posits that it will require more than a new regulatory framework—even if it turns out to be as good as workers hope it to be—to solve a problem that has deep and complex social origins and ramifications. As I argued in the earlier sections, precarious employment arose and became prevalent not simply because of the limitations of the law. It was the logical consequence of political and economic designs—championed by the economic and political elites—that defined the Philippine historical experience and the laws were actually put in place to maintain these. The Labor Code of 1974 provided the necessary political structure and stimulus for precarious work that was already in existence in a slightly different form under colonialism. The subsequent laws and policies made to supposedly fix the problems the Labor Code created were simply attempts to keep the growing workers’ discontent at bay. The passage of these failed policies lent the state a veneer of reform while it continued to resolutely engage in the business of facilitating worker exploitation upon the bidding of global and local capital. The effect of this scourge could not be understated. It led not only to depression of wages but also rendered the working class defenseless and divested of its most important weapon in the face of attacks because the extraction of cheap labor came along with the thrashing of workers solidarity.
The success of the state in preserving this status quo was due in part to the fragmentation of the labor movement, which is not to say that efforts to challenge and oppose were in vain. The long and arduous engagement in political battle in the arena of public policy has afforded the chance to surface and validate lessons on point of ideology and strategy. The unity currently enjoyed by the Philippine labor movement at this historical juncture, for one, sprang from this experience of defeat and disappointment. That Labor Day celebrations and rallies in the last 3 years have been jointly organized and attended by these groups, instead of separately as in the past is a most welcome development. Organizing workers outside the formal boundaries of unionism also emerged as a form of urgent political work. Kilos na Manggagawa (Workers Act Now) in the national capital and Liga ng mga Manggagawaang Kontraktwal (League of Contractual Workers) in Southern Tagalog, whose membership comprise largely contractual workers, are invigorating the labor movement.
Just as importantly, the continuing struggle against precarious employment is putting into sharper focus the fundamental ills of society and the global economic and political system at large even as the government continues to use legal and rhetorical smoke and mirrors. The theory and practice of social movement unionism is, therefore, kept alive and continuously refined by such moment of historical analysis. A network of labor unions, advocates, activists, and academics in Southern Tagalog, for example, has created the Diosdado Fortuna Academy (DFA) in 2010. Named after a martyred labor unionist and managed by the Southern Tagalog Workers Advocacy, Research and Development, Inc. (STEWARD), DFA offers an educational program that covers three key areas: labor rights, skills and cultural, and social and political. Hence, in addition to labor rights and welfare, workers in the region receive education on other topics such as songwriting, painting, Philippine social realities, capitalist crisis and socialism, global financial crisis, and mass campaign planning and administration. Workers also continue to bring one of the largest contingents in mass actions such as the annual protest during the State of the Nation Address of the President. These different forms of political work suggest that some workers and their labor organizations continue to see themselves and their fight for freedom as an integral part of a larger social movement for social justice and liberation.
I believe these are clear and encouraging indications that despite the fact that the fight against precarious employment is very unlikely to be won in the arena of public policy under Philippine society's current political and economic disposition, there arises the opportunity to better imagine and prepare for a bigger or more decisive battle. As the lessons of history dictate, it will be necessary to confront all the forms and manners of injustice from the exploiting class in this future encounter. And the Filipino working class will continue to play a leading and critical role in the battleground as this class war rages on.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to extend my profound thanks to the anonymous reviewers who imparted illuminating comments and suggestions that have been very helpful in my revisions and the editors of the journal for facilitating that wonderful exchange. I am grateful as well to the intellectual support provided by my colleagues Jayson Fajarda, Melane Manalo, Eula Mangaoang, and Nelin Estocado and comrades in the labor movement in Southern Tagalog under the Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan-Kilusang Mayo Uno (PAMANTIK-KMU). Lastly, I am indebted to the University of the Philippines-National College Public Administration and Governance under whose auspices the research for this article was conducted.
ENDNOTES
- 1 Batas Pambansa is the name of legislative acts established by virtue of the 1973 Philippine Constitution. Legislative acts were later called Republic Acts upon the promulgation of the 1986 Freedom Constitution.
- 2 A cabinet secretary, acting as the alter ego of the President in his/her respective department is given the power to issue directives relative to his/her department in the form of a Department Order.
- 3 Executive Orders are Presidential policy directives providing for rules in implementation or execution of a constitutional provision.
Biography
Vincent Q. Silarde is a University Researcher, University of the Philippines-National College of Public Administration and Governance.