How did the working class fare in 2023? Wages and jobs remained the most pressing issues for workers and the poor.
Workers caught between shrinking amounts of products and shrinking value
of wages
The cost of living crisis in the country is expressed, on the one hand,
in the deflation of real wages and, on the other hand, in the shrinkflation of
commodities. Caught between shrinking amounts of products and shrinking value
of wages, workers are reeling from hardship during the holidays. No wonder that
a survey has shown that one of every four employees prefer to monetize the
Christmas parties held by companies for their workforce. It is better to have
money in the pocket than to have fun with workmates.
In 14 out of 17 regions, minimum wages were increased by PhP 30 to Php
40 in the second half of this year, bringing them to a high of Php 610 in Metro
Manila to a low of PhP 368 in Zamboanga Peninsula. However, the equivalent real
wages remain depressed. The real wage in Metro Manila is only PhP 504. That is,
PhP 610 in 2023 can only buy the equivalent of PhP 504 in 2018, or a gap of PhP
106.
The difference between nominal and real wages is a result of inflation
over the years: wage hikes have not kept up with the rise in prices and so
workers’ purchasing power has been depleted. The nominal versus real wage gap
ranges from PhP 63 in Zamboanga Peninsula to PhP 108 in Central Luzon. Thus the
necessity for Congress to plug the gap by enacting the bill for a PhP 150 salary
increase.
The minimum wage adjustments were a belated response from the government
to organized labor’s demand for salary increases since last year. In December
2022, the group Kapatiran ng mga Unyon at Samahang Manggagawa filed a petition
for an additional PhP 100 in minimum wage so that workers can recover their
lost purchasing power. Similar petitions were filed in Calabarzon, Cebu and
Western Visayas. The wage orders from the different regional wage boards then
fell short of the wage recovery demand. Expectedly, real wages stayed deflated
despite the latest round of minimum wage hikes.
Shrinkflation is just one problem facing workers and the poor. Rice
cannot shrink and so its price continues to rise. One kilo of rice today costs
from PhP 52 to PhP 68. The onset of El Nino next year is bound to push the
price of rice even more. As a pre-emptive move, President Bong Bong Marcos Jr.
has already extended the tariff cut on imported rice up to the end of next year
to ease rice inflation. Still, this is a band aid solution. His election
promise to bring the cost of rice to PhP 20 per kilo is even further from
reality.
Food in general remains the biggest expenditure for ordinary households.
This reveals not just the survival challenges for the working class but the
underdevelopment problem faced by Philippine society. Higher expenses for
non-food items are a characteristic of more developed countries.
Reality of jeepney livelihood loss and myth of new jobs created
In a yearend statement, the government avers that 200,000 new jobs were
created as a result of investment pledges accruing from President Bong Bong
Marcos’ trips abroad. Assuming this is true—the government needs to explain how
they guessed these figures—this is almost matched by the number of traditional
jeepney operators and drivers who will lose their livelihood as a result of the
cancellation of their individual franchises. The President does not need a 58%
hike in his travel budget to PhP 1.4 billion to generate new jobs, he just
needs to extend the individual franchises so that existing livelihoods are preserved.
At the stroke of midnight on December 31, 148,000 will lose their
livelihoods. This is conservatively estimated as one operator and one driver
for the 74,000 jeepneys units which have not been consolidated either into
cooperatives or corporations, according to the Land Transportation and
Franchising Board. This is a significant number, comprising an additional 7% to
the 2,090,000 officially unemployed Filipinos as of October 2023.
The current administration is just implementing a business-as-usual and
hands-off approach to employment: let the private sector, whether local or
foreign, direct economic development. In place for 50 years or so, this broken
system has led us to double-digit unemployment plus underemployment and
permanent overseas migration.
It is high time to contemplate another and better way: an industrial and
agricultural policy that focuses on job creation. This
should be at the top of the wish list for 2024.
While unemployment in October has gone down to 4.2%, underemployment is
more than double at 11.7%. The underemployed are those who want more hours of
work, presumably because they do not earn enough. This is a result of the very
broad definition of an employed person—somebody who has worked for at least one
hour in the previous week! No wonder there is very low official unemployment
given that very loose meaning.
Another telling statistic that reveals the extent of the problem of lack
of quality jobs is the high rate of migration. The latest figures from the
Philippine Statistics Authority show that almost two million Filipinos worked
abroad annually or some 5,000 OFWs were deployed daily. This sums up to about
2.6% of the total population that is over 15 years old. In other words, the
unemployment rate would go up by more than half—at the very least—to 6.8% if
Filipinos did not leave for gainful employment abroad.
Slightly more than half of Filipino migrant workers are female and more
than one fourth of them—the largest cohort—are young workers aged 30 to 34
years. An overwhelming number of OFWs are in the elementary occupations, a
euphemism for unskilled and menial jobs such as domestic and care work, and
construction jobs. Meaning, Filipinos are working abroad not for dream jobs but
for 3D work—dirty, dangerous and demeaning—that just happens to pay better than
what is available in the country. Again to stress the point, the Philippine
migration profile exposes the open secret of the deficits of good-paying jobs
in the country.
The death of Secretary Susan Ople last August cut short her efforts to
establish the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW). Her father, Blas Ople, was
then Labor Minister in 1976 when a temporary program to place Filipino workers
in the Middle East started the current wave of migration. It was deemed
temporary since it was a disgrace for the martial law regime to admit that
workers had to be deployed abroad to ease unemployment. A temporary scheme that
has lasted 47 years from the father, Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. to his son and
namesake, Bong Bong Marcos, Jr. is a testament to the utter bankruptcy of the
economic and employment models followed by all the past governments, whether
pre- or post-EDSA. The establishment of the DMW is a tacit admission that the
government considers migration to be a permanent not provisional system to
create jobs for Filipinos. ###
