| Home Kapatiran
Issue Number 22, January 2003
|
Kapatiran Issue
No. 22, January 2003
GLOBALISATION AND
WOMEN WORKERS IN THE PHILIPPINES
- Emilia Dapulang, National Vice Chairperson of the
Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU- May First Movement).
Globalising The Philippine Economy
At the onset of the global debt crisis in the early
1980s, the Philippines, like so many other backward and
bankrupt countries of the Third World, was hard pressed
to service the mounting debts that the Marcos
dictatorship had incurred from transnational banks that
had gone on a lending binge in the 1970s. Faced with the
threat of being cut off from external funds which were
needed to paper over the perennial deficits that these
maldeveloped economies incur, most Third World countries
were easily coerced into implementing "structural
reforms" peddled by the International Monetary
Fund-World Bank (IMF-WB) in order to earn a clean bill of
health from these US-controlled international financial
institutions and, thus, gain access to external
financing.
The last two decades of neoliberal reforms in the
Philippines have seen the most intense opening up of the
country to foreign capital in its history. Tariffs were
slashed from an average rate of 41% in 1981 to 8% by 2000
while import restrictions such as quotas and other
non-tariff barriers were removed. Foreign investment was
courted by allowing 100% foreign ownership in all but a
few sectors since 1991 and there's complete freedom to
repatriate capital. Foreign exchange controls were
dropped in 1993.
Water transport was liberalised and deregulated in 1992,
telecommunications in 1993, banking and shipping in 1994,
airlines in 1995, oil in 1996, and retail trade in 2000.
Over US$3.5 billion worth of government assets were
privatised, including oil firms and water utilities.
Essential road and power infrastructure was turned over
to the private sector through build-operate-transfer
(BOT) projects following deregulation in 1993.
In 1992, the liberalisation programme was accompanied by
greater regional integration with the establishment of
the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Free
Trade Area (AFTA) and the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC). And of course there was the Senate
ratification of the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) in 1994 and accession to the newly-created
World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995. The WTO has
explicitly governed domestic economic policy-making since
then.
The champions of neoliberal globalisation have been
gloating over the surge in exports and inflows of foreign
direct investment into the country between the 1980s and
the 1990s, increasing by 250% and 216%, respectively. By
the mid-1990s, Government public relations trumpeted
"Philippines 2000" and claimed that the country
was on the threshold of attaining new industrialised
country (NIC) status before the Millennium closed.
(Although the country's poor average annual growth rate
in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 2.9% in the
decade 1991-2000 was well below that of Indonesia (4.1%),
Thailand (4.3%), Malaysia (6.7%), Taiwan (5.8%), South
Korea (6.0%) and Singapore (7.5%)*. (*Although the
country's poor average annual growth rate in real Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) of 2.9% in the decade 1991-2000
was well below that of Indonesia (4.1%), Thailand (4.3%),
Malaysia (6.7%), Taiwan (5.8%), South Korea (6.0%) and
Singapore (7.5%).
Overall Impact Of Neoliberal Globalisation
But as the 2002 Philippines Human Development Report
(PHDR) puts it, "while there has been structural
change, it is of the wrong kind".
Contrary to neoliberal globalisation's promise of
industrialisation, the share of industry to total
employment and output in the Philippines has remained
stagnant over the last three decades. The share of
manufacturing employment and value-added today is
actually lower compared to its share in the mid-1950s as
manufacturing productivity steadily declined since then.
A domestic capital goods sector is virtually
non-existent. In the 2000s, despite greater investment
inflows, we are witnessing a deepening
deindustrialisation as evidenced by a declining trend in
the share of manufacturing in gross domestic output and
in overall productivity.
Distribution of Gross Domestic Output,
1946-1997
| By Source |
1946 |
1950 |
1960 |
1970 |
1980 |
1990 |
1997 |
| Agriculture |
36.4% |
34.7% |
26.5% |
33.1% |
21.5% |
21.9% |
18.8% |
| Industry |
23.9% |
27.1% |
31.4% |
39.4% |
34.3% |
34.5% |
32.4% |
| ..Manufacturing |
12.3% |
16.1% |
24.6% |
27.9% |
23.0% |
24.8% |
22.5% |
| ..Light
Consumer Mfg |
|
|
|
15.0% |
12.0% |
15.2% |
13.1% |
| ..Intermediates |
|
|
|
8.5% |
8.6% |
7.7% |
6.4% |
| ..Producer
(Capital) Goods |
|
|
|
4.4% |
2.4% |
2.0% |
2.9% |
| Services |
39.7% |
38.2% |
42.1% |
27.4% |
44.2% |
43.6% |
48.8% |
Source: National
Statistical Coordination Board data
Neither has agricultural
liberalisation helped the farming sector. Comparing the
five years after the country's membership in the WTO in
1994 with the five years before it, rice imports
increased by 540%, corn by 320%, poultry by 580%, beef by
230%, pork by 120% and fish by 45%. Correspondingly, the
US$1.3 billion agricultural trade surplus turned into a
US$3.5 billion deficit after the country's accession to
the WTO. As a further result, the agricultural sector
lost over a million jobs between 1994 and 2000,
increasing rural poverty by 690,000 families. Yet even
those still farming have faced dropping farmgate prices -
from between 5% to as much as 32% in just the previous
year.
Globalisation's Impact On Labour
Jobless Growth
This goes some way in explaining the country's dismal
employment picture. In the first quarter of 2002, the
number of jobless Filipinos reached 4.8 million, pushing
the unemployment rate to 13.9% (and remember, this is
in a country with no unemployment benefit. Ed.).
2002's unemployment rate may even top 2001's 11.2%, which
was already the worst unemployment figure in over four
decades. And these figures don't even include thousands
of "discouraged workers" - jobless workers who
have given up on their job search, hence, are not counted
in official unemployment figures.
Amid the unbridled exposure of the country to the
onslaught of both manufactured imports and subsidised
agricultural products of foreign monopolies, trade
liberalisation has also encouraged a shift towards the
non-tradeable sectors of the economy, namely, services as
well as the informal sector where more women have found
employment.
Thus, the increase in female labour force participation
rates has outpaced that of men. This also explains in
part why women have now been experiencing lower
unemployment rates than men since 1999.
But we're not talking about "knowledge-based"
service industries such as "dotcoms",
telecommunications, finance, research and development,
and other high-tech and highly paid services that have
characterised the shift to services in the advanced
capitalist countries.
In the Philippines, the population of service workers is
largely represented by the semi-proletariat:
workers who are only intermittently inserted in wage
relations and/or may own the most minor of means of
production for independent petty production, be it for
exchange or subsistence. Many of these workers,
especially in the rural areas, are sidelined peasants in
reality.
In other words, the feminisation of the labour force in
the Philippines is more of a "survival
strategy" for working-class households whose incomes
have been declining and whose jobs are increasingly
temporary in nature, rather than a response to greater
job opportunities for women in the economy. More members
of the household are simply forced to earn a living in
order to make ends meet as well as to spread risks
associated with insecure and irregular incomes.
Moreover, gender discrimination and women's secondary
status is still reflected in the distribution of female
employment. Women comprise the majority in retail trading
(as ambulant vendors, hawkers, small store operators),
education (as teachers), "community and personal
services" (as health and social workers, servers in
restaurants, beauticians, manicurists) and "private
households with employed persons" (as domestic
helpers and home workers). Men are still overwhelmingly
dominant in agriculture, administrative, executive and
managerial work and production and related occupations
while women are dominant in sales. Women also form a
slight majority in clerical work and other related
services. In short, women are dominant in sectors and
occupations that earn below the average wage rate.
Small wonder then that 2,700 Filipinos leave the country
each day to work overseas. Labour export has become an
increasingly important outlet for surplus labour over the
last two decades. The number of deployed overseas
Filipino workers (OFWs) has more than doubled from
372,784 in 1985 to 866,590 in 2001. OFW deployment has
even increased faster than domestic job creation.
Women comprise a growing share of migrant workers: from
12% of all OFWs deployed in 1975 to around half in 2001.
This means an average of 1,600 Filipina mothers and
daughters leave the country daily in order to earn a
living away from their own families - to work as domestic
workers, nannies, caregivers, nurses and even as
"entertainers", often a euphemism for the sex
trade.
In the absence of any meaningful safety nets apart from
kinship and community, most Filipinos simply can't afford
to be "unemployed", hence, official
unemployment figures cannot capture the severity of the
jobs crisis in the country. Thus it's revealing to add
the five million underemployed and the estimated eight
million OFWs to these unemployment figures. Doing this
draws attention to how the economy can't provide
sufficient livelihoods for some 42% of the labour force.
The growing number of workers who are not able to find
regular employment in agriculture, industry or overseas
are forced to rely on their own devices in order to eke
out a living as "own-account workers", mostly
in the informal sector.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates
that informal sector employment (own-account workers and
unpaid family workers) has hovered at around half of
total employment in the Philippines over the last 50
years. Enterprise-based workers account for a mere 10 to
15% of total employment according to census figures.
These figures reveal that the overwhelming majority of
Filipino workers -- especially women -- are idled or else
trapped in stagnant, low-productivity informal sector
employment characterised by job insecurity, highly
irregular and meagre incomes, and precarious employment.
In essence, they form an extension of the reserve army of
labour.
Nearly all sectors show evidence of becoming more
informalised in recent years. Those showing the fastest
rate of informalisation are manufacturing, trade and even
finance.
Low-wage Employment
Alongside the country's jobless growth pattern, per
capita income has remained stagnant as per capita Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) in 2000 was still below that in
1980. Real wages today are barely above their 1980
levels. After declining in the acute crisis years of 1981
to 1984, real wages rose from their lowest point in 1984
to their peak in 1990 due to the vigorous agitation of
the militant labour movement. But subsequent to the
dismantling of the national minimum wage in 1989 and the
beginning of the second phase of trade liberalisation in
1990, real wages have fallen steadily to a level near to
where it was two decades ago.
Today, the daily minimum wage of 250 pesos (or around
US$5) in Metro Manila (where it is highest) is less than
half the daily cost of living for a family of six (the
average size in the Philippines), now estimated at nearly
P540 (US$10). And women workers earn less than their male
counterparts even within the same occupations. Among
production workers, the ratio of women's wages to men's
in 1992 ranged from 42% for workers in the 51-65 age
bracket, to 89% for those in their early 20s. Women's
wages are close to par with men only in those occupations
where they form the majority such as clerical and sales
positions. But these are low-wage positions anyway.
Labour Contractualisation
Apart from low wages, irregular or atypical forms of
employment have been on the rise as capitalist-employers
dismantle hard-won rights such as job security and
minimum wage regulation which they consider as
"rigidities" in the labour market.
"Flexible labour", on the other hand, allows
capitalists to drive down workers' wages and benefits and
preclude workers organising and collective bargaining.
A 1990 survey revealed that about two thirds of all
establishments employed workers in irregular or atypical
employment. The combined share of casual, contractual and
part-time workers in total enterprise-based employment
fluctuated around 14-15% from 1990 to 1994 but jumped to
18.1% between 1994 and 1995, and further to 21.1% as of
1997 (the latest year for which data is available). This
is an underestimate of the extent of contractualisation,
to be sure, considering that these account for only
three forms of insecure employment and only those
reported by employers to the Department of Labor and
Employment (DOLE). Other forms of contractualisation,
which include subcontracting, agency hiring, job-out,
homework and an array of other schemes that effectively
deny workers security of tenure, are not included in
these estimates.
Nevertheless, these figures suggest that the
contractualisation of labour has been accelerating in
recent years, even before the 1997 financial crisis that
hit the region. In the midst of the crisis in the world
capitalist system, contractualisation is sure to
accelerate even further as capitalists seek to secure and
augment their profits at the expense of the working
class: by retrenching regular workers and replacing them
with contractuals. After all, non-regular workers are
paid 40% less than their regular counterparts on the
average.
Export processing zones (EPZ) are notorious for their
unwritten no union, no strike policy. In EPZs, young,
single, women comprise the majority of the workforce.
They are preferred in part because of a number of gender
stereotypes.
First, women are considered more manually dexterous with
nimble fingers appropriate for small parts assembly.
Second, women are regarded as more diligent and patient,
which is deemed necessary due to the long hours of
repetitive work.
Third, women are considered easier to manage, more docile
and less likely than male workers to join trade unions or
"cause trouble".
Finally, women are also assumed to be more willing to
work for low wages and have a higher rate of voluntary
turnover due to their supposed status as "secondary
wage earners" and the primacy of their reproductive
role in the family.
In EPZs, it is common for workers to work 12 to 14 hour
workdays, six or seven days a week, in a span of three or
four months at a time. Workers on extended hours, evening
or overnight shifts are more easily fatigued, and suffer
other health problems as a result of physically demanding
work schedules. Women workers, in particular, are exposed
to threats to their safety because of the late hours they
are forced to keep - sexual harassment, rape, and violent
crimes in general. Workers' families also suffer when
parents have to spend even evenings and weekends at work.
To ensure bigger profits for capitalists, women workers'
reproductive functions are regulated in many firms
located in EPZs. There are reported cases of single women
being subjected to "virginity tests" to ensure
that they are sexually inactive, or else they are not
hired. We have encountered numerous reports of this
happening but it would be difficult to actually gauge how
prevalent this is, because of the sensitive nature of the
matter. In a number of cases, married women who are
already employed are required to practice birth control
including tubal ligation (female sterilisation. Ed.).
Married women who "misrepresented" themselves
as single when they applied for work are terminated.
Meanwhile, garment production is increasingly being
subcontracted to homebased workers who largely fall
outside the purview of labour standards and labour
rights. Subcontracting is an important component of the
production process and much of the work is done in the
workers' homes. This contrasts with the electronics
industry where subcontracting is firm-based.
Garment manufacturers are able to cut costs on the
maintenance of a factory and other costs of production,
including contributions to mandatory social protection
such as Social Security and health insurance (Medicare).
They easily take advantage of women workers who face the
double burden of balancing work with homemaking
responsibilities.
Trade Union Repression
Moreover, contractualisation does not only affect workers
in contractual arrangements. Unions are objectively
undermined when contractual employees -- who are stripped
of their rights to form and join unions and to
participate in strikes -- comprise a large share of the
total workforce.
And history has shown that whenever labour is hobbled by
law or practice in the collective struggle for decent
jobs, living wages and democratic rights,
capitalist-employers are all the better able to depress
overall wage rates and intensify their exploitation of
all workers, whether in regular or contractual
employment.
Indeed, the Government's modest labour inspectorate
system reveals that the majority of firms inspected
actually violate labour standards and more than one
fourth pay wages below the mandatory minimum. These
figures only cover those firms actually inspected by the
DOLE. With an "army" of 250 labour inspectors,
the Department is only able to inspect around 4% of over
820,000 establishments throughout the country in any
given year, not to mention the informal sector of the
economy.
Furthermore, DOLE's inspectorate is only concerned with
monitoring compliance with occupational health and safety
standards (OHS), wages and wage-related benefits and
leave mandated by law. On the other hand, workers and
their bosses are largely left to their own devices when
it comes to the observance of trade union rights.
Thus, while there is widespread violation of
"general labour standards" (OHS, wages and
benefits) in the Philippines, there is even less respect
for trade union rights and security of tenure. This is
confirmed by a recent survey of manufacturing firms in
Metro Manila (National Capital Region) which revealed
that out of six ILO core labour standards, firms complied
least with ILO Convention Nos. 87 and 98 or the freedom
of association and the protection of the right to
organise. The same survey revealed that "lack of
management sincerity" was ranked third by
management respondents among the factors that
hindered compliance to core labour standards, next to
"high costs of capitalisation" and "low
labour productivity".(Divina Edralin (2000).
"Factors Influencing the Observance of the Core ILO
Standards by Manufacturing Companies", Philippine
APEC Study Centre Network (PASCN) Discussion Paper No.
2000-02, Makati City.)*. (*Divina Edralin [2000].
"Factors Influencing the Observance of the Core ILO
Standards by Manufacturing Companies", Philippine
Apec Study Network (PASCN) Discussion Papaer No. 2000-02,
Makati City).
It is therefore no surprise that there are only 3.8
million workers organised in active unions, as of 2000.
Of these, less than 500,000 are covered by collective
bargaining agreements or a mere 3.5% of all wage and
salary workers in the country. The proportion of wage and
salary workers covered by collective bargaining has
fallen drastically over the last two decades from 12.7%
in 1981, demonstrating globalisation's adverse impact on
workers' rights.
Women comprise the majority in labour-intensive export
manufacturing which the Government and IMF-WB technocrats
claim to be the key to industrialisation in the Third
World. The Philippines followed this advice by promoting
garment exports in the 1970s and electronics exports in
the 1990s and these two sectors are emblematic of the
problems of the Philippine economy and of its so-called
export-oriented industrialisation strategy.
Both sectors are located in the low value-added end of
the global production chain and require low-waged and
low-skilled workers. Female workers comprise the bulk of
the workforce in the two industries: around 77% in
garments and 72% in electronics. Electronics is based in
EPZs, which are notorious for their unwritten no union,
no strike policy.
Indeed, workers' trade union and democratic rights are
systematically and rampantly violated by
capitalist-bosses, often with tacit or even open
complicity of government officials at various levels. (For
more details, refer to the separate article on trade
union repression elsewhere in this issue). Pursuant
to neoliberal globalisation, the Government enforces a
"cheap, docile and flexible labour policy" for
the benefit of capitalists but leaves workers biting the
dust.
Amidst an ocean of surplus labour, workers who do find
jobs are compelled to endure low wages, inhumane working
conditions, lack of job security and the practical
absence of the right to unionise or to strike. Through
such conditions, global capitalists and their cohorts are
able to extract superprofits from the blood and sweat of
workers in the Philippines and all over the globe.
The Struggle For Social Justice
For women workers in the Philippines or elsewhere in the
world, it is not enough and indeed, counter-productive to
adopt a slogan of "women's participation" if
this simply means integrating women in the neoliberal
development model. It is grossly misleading to banner the
empowerment of women without addressing the economic and
political basis of our disempowerment and marginalisation
in the decision-making structures of society. This is
because the marginalisation of women is embedded in the
structure of class, race and national oppression.
For instance, the advocacy for women's greater
participation in decision-making processes within the
same exploitative structures did open up opportunities
for women in the Philippines but only for elite women
in electoral politics. We have had two women
Presidents (Cory Aquino and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Ed.) in the last two decades, both of whom oversaw
the militarisation of the countryside that led to an
upsurge in human rights violations against peasants and
indigenous peoples. Women, children and the elderly
comprise the majority of people victimised and displaced
by these incursions. The current woman President has
referred to workers who go on strike as
"terrorists." At least five women activists
have already been killed by military and paramilitary
groups since July 2001- and these are partial figures.
For as long as those who wield power are the few who
monopolise and control the economic resources and the
coercive instruments of society, the majority of the
world's women who are powerless and exploited will remain
so.
Likewise, electing labour representatives in governments
that are captured by foreign monopoly capital, the local
big bourgeoisie and the landed gentry will not bring
about the emancipation of the working class. Indeed,
so-called labour parties in power no longer represent the
genuine interests of (rank-and-file) workers. On the
contrary, they have been the key implementors of
liberalisation and the erosion of hard-won rights and
social protections which have wrought untold misery to
workers and other marginalised sectors in society while
strengthening the stranglehold of corporate power
worldwide. By extension, simply calling for greater
representation of workers in imperialist-controlled
international institutions such as the IMF, WB and the
WTO will not bring about the liberation and development
of oppressed nations while we remain in an international
order dominated by a handful of imperialist countries led
by the US.
Our urgent task is to strengthen people's organisations,
resistance and collective action towards exposing and
opposing imperialist machinations; to build people's
power, not to lend corporate power a pleasant mask. We
must strive to attain tactical gains that contribute to
strategic goals. This means strengthening and expanding
our movements, struggling to circumscribe the
powers and influence of transnational corporations, the
multilateral institutions and the monopoly capitalists
that they represent, as we endeavour towards the long-run
transformation of relations of production, of social and
political structures at the national and global levels
that breed the impoverishment and oppression of workers
and other marginalised sectors everywhere.
We must build and strengthen anti-imperialist unity among
workers and together with other democratic and
progressive forces in our respective countries and across
national borders in the spirit of true proletarian
internationalism.
Ultimately, the New World Disorder challenges and
requires the working class and the rest of the people to
wage political struggle against imperialism for national
liberation, democracy and socialism.
After Emilia's tour was over, the KMU provided PSNA
with a second version of this speech, with substantive
differences to the first. We decided to publish the
version that Emilia actually delivered throughout her New
Zealand tour. I have taken some passages from Version 2
to patch some holes and fill out some other sections in
Version 1, but otherwise Version 1 is what we have
published here.
If you would like a copy of Version 2 of Emilia's
speech, please contact PSNA. Specify if you would a hard
copy or an electronic one. Ed.
Go to top
|
