Workers' post-Labor Day blues

It has been a week after this years’ celebration of Labor Day, and the workers across the country are still full of anxieties and some uncertainties. There are at least three issues that keep on lingering in their minds. First, is the contentious issue of minimum wage increases, if any. Second, is the question of workers’ protection relative to health, safety and welfare, especially for special groups of employees like women, child laborers, workers in the call centers or BPOs, seamen and OFWs, especially the household service workers. And third, is the issue of workers’ security of tenure in a globalized economy. These issues have always been there since the promulgation of the Labor Code, but today’s emerging new systems of doing business, and the eradication of trade, economic, and political barriers among nations and economies have made the problems more complicated.

 The matter of wage increases has always been a contentious and at times, adversarial issue. The workers would naturally demand for adjustments of their pay levels, in the light of the seemingly endless increases in the prices of oil and oil products, which triggered a series of price hikes in transport costs, prices of foods, and prime commodities. On the other hand, the employers would always argue that any wage hike, at this point in time, would cause the closures of some business firms, especially the small and medium-scale enterprises, which constitute the bulk of our economy. Moreover, the employers would reason out that any wage hike would be inflationary, that it would compel companies to install labor-saving devices for such additional cost would erode corporate profitability, business competitiveness, and that it would even discourage job creation. Thus, the business sector would conclude that wage hikes would turn out to generate anti-labor and anti-business consequences, that it is a loss-loss proposition. Of course, the government looks at wages in the larger context of the need to maintain a socio- economic equilibrium, in line with Pres. Aquino’s Social Contract principles and philosophy of the government’s role in the relationship between labor and capital.

 The issue of workers’ protection has turn out to be an urgent one especially in the light of many developments in the environment, new technologies and business systems that impinge on the health of workers, especially the more vulnerable sectors like the female workers, the working mothers’ and their special needs, the minor workers who are subjected to virtual involuntary servitudes in manufacturing, mining and other operations that are dirty, difficult and dangerous to their physical, mental, psychological and moral development. Corollary to these are the problems being faced by workers in the entertainment industry who are always vulnerable to sexual molestations and abuses. The plight of our OFWs in countries involved in wars and revolutions and those affected by natural calamities are also matters that occupy the minds of the workers’ sector. Another group that is urgently calling for help are the call center agents, especially the women who work at night shifts. These workers expect more safety nets, in order to safeguard their health, safety and welfare.

 The last issue is perhaps the most difficult one, the issue of security of tenure vis-a-vis the need for companies to remain competitive by, among other mechanisms, to outsource some non-core activities. The definition of what constitute core and non-core activities is not an easy nut to crack. The workers, through their unions, would argue that almost all functions are “usually necessary and desirable to the main business of employers,’’ otherwise, they would not have created such functions, at all. This is the unamended provision of the Labor Code that guarantees security of tenure to regular employees. On the other hand, business would argue that it is within the prerogatives of management to undertake such measures. To deprive them of such powers would be tantamount, according to them, to a deprivation of their right to the rightful use and disposition of their property. Workers would refute that while it may be the employers’ right to property, it involves the workers fundamental right to life, and livelihood, which if denied would be denial of life itself, and that the right to life takes precedence over the right to property.

Of course, workers do not argue like legal luminaries nor do they communicate with equal sophistication as the employers, who could hire the best legal minds to defend their thesis in any court of law, or the best PR firm to create a favorable corporate image for themselves. But the workers have the power to seek redress of their grievances in Congress and in the streets. They have sectoral representatives in Congress. There are NGOs and media practitioners behind them and even global organizations to bolster their cause. Because of these conflicting forces, government must always be prepared to conciliate and mediate, and not to become virtual captives of either capital nor of organized labor, but an umpire and a reconciler, whose only loyalty is to the people in general, and whose principal mission is peace based on justice. That is, of course, easier said than done. But it should be said and done definitely.