|
LABOR Day 2008 is unlike other workers’ day. Rice and energy
prices have spiraled up around the world, bringing bad news to a
country of rice eaters and gas guzzlers. No food shortage yet but
the government is encouraging alternatives to rice. Car owners are
reviewing their travel habits while public-transport operators are
itching for a fare increase. Families are mulling rice-less days. Consumer
groups are busy advising us how to save on water, electricity and
gasoline. Coming soon: rising electric bills and LPG costs.
Environmentalists are warning about a likely water shortage.
The hit list of the shadowy assassins and the
paramilitary has also included trade union leaders and labor
organizers. Bureaucrats and generals of small minds identify labor
with leftism and sedition.
Roque’s baptism of fire
This is also the first Labor Day for the new
DOLE secretary. Mr. Marianito Roque, who has hardly warmed his seat
in Intramuros, inherits a host of problems although not of former
Secretary Arturo Brion’s making.
The problems are familiar: chronic joblessness,
widespread underemployment, stagnating incomes, an unchecked outflow
of professionals and skilled workers, and a job-skills mismatch that
CHED chairman Romulo Neri was ordered to look into (and hasn’t)
that leaves many college graduates jobless and business
organizations short on the human resources they badly need.
The good news is that industrial peace is stable
(for numerous reasons), the training of the unskilled and
out-of-school youth is on schedule, the pace of labor organizing and
collective bargaining is respectable but could stand improvement,
and the dollar remittances keep coming to feed the OFWs’ families
and to buoy the national economy.
A global citizen
The Filipino worker owns a global visa. He toils
in more than 100 countries that include the communist states. He
works in a wide range of jobs, from housekeeping to keeping
healthcare and technology industries together. He is mobile because
he mans one-fourth of the world’s shipping on the seven seas.
In the Philippines, the traditional
agricultural and industry workers are supplemented by professionals
in business process outsourcing and pioneering Internet merchants
spawned by new information-technology networks. Make way for the new
entrepreneurs, the small businessmen who have wisely chosen to stay
out of 9 to 5 jobs to found new ventures that sell a wide range of
products and services and that employ thousands of their countrymen.
The workers pay taxes, remit earnings to the
Philippines, bear arms for the country when necessary, take part in
elections and keep the economy moving. What do they get in return?
The millions who work in underpaying jobs need extra income. What
help could they expect from the government and the private sector?
The totally unemployed who are counted in the labor force could not
send their children to school or buy their basic needs. How looms
their future?
Growth without jobs
We understand why the Office of the President
and the National Economic and Development Authority must prepare
long-term development plans and work on meeting their goals. Growth
does not happen overnight. Planning however must emphasize growth
with jobs and development must translate into higher incomes and
improvements in life.
Every official from President Arroyo down to the
NEDA action officer agrees that growth in the past 37 quarters
“has not trickled down” to the lives of the masses. Shall we
have more of the same or shall we, to use an overworked phrase,
think out of the box?
Planning long term, private business and the
state should work together to create a hospitable business and
investment climate, open up along constitutional lines virgin
business ventures to foreigners, develop the regions, make
agriculture grow, diversify exports, strengthen science, math and
technology and spread the message of entrepreneurship as an
alternative to traditional blue- and white-collar jobs.
Four-day workweek
Many exciting ideas in the short term are coming
from the NGOs and think tanks. Consider an emergency employment
program, says the Blas Ople Policy Institute, that employs the
jobless and that builds or repairs vital public-works projects. For
the jobless youth or students on vacation, launch a special summer
jobs scheme that enables young men and women to earn and to keep
themselves busy.
Another suggestion is to declare a temporary but
mandatory four-day workweek for government offices except those
dealing with public health and national security. A four-day
workweek will enable government employees to save on transportation
and food while giving them a three-day weekend with their families
or to jumpstart a backyard business. This would also help ease
traffic on Fridays and help government save on energy costs.
Labor Day comes minus the promise of
higher wages. There is no easement on remittance fees. But the
Palace has promised nonwage benefits to celebrate the day. At least
we have the Quality Affordable Medicine Bill that we hope President
Arroyo signs today. We hope she signs another bill exempting
low-wage workers from the income tax. If her geniuses at the MMDA
and the DOTC can make traffic more humane and commuting more
comfortable, that would help keep the national blood pressure down.
|
