Last October 10, 2018, I attended a talk named “Unyon: A form on Labor Rights and

Labor Issues.” As seen in the title of the TALAB talk, we talked about labor rights in the
Philippines. It wasn’t a long and boring discussion that most people would expect talks to be. To
me, it was very interesting because the people who talked right in front of us were directly
affected by fighting for labor rights.
The first speaker is a heading member of the “Sentro and Buklurang Manggagawa ng
Pilipinas.” He started strong by talking about being involved in strikes every month with common
workers fighting for labor rights from August until now. Before, workers were very afraid of being
a part of strike because they are very afraid of losing their jobs, but now, workers are given a
new found strength, wherein they feel the power to stop production affecting the companies and
factories that they work for. Workers won’t work until the boss talked to them and settles for
better working conditions. He then shares with us that there is almost to no difference in the
workload of a regular and contractual. In fact, contractual workers are only incidental workers
needed in a firm, so work expected of them shouldn’t be more than what the regular worker
does. However, this is not the true in our working condition. I could definitely see by his stories
that he really is committed to fighting for workers’ labor rights. In fact, he told us that he attends
the strikes along with the workers and also takes part in hunger strikes. It is definitely no joke to
be committed to this because volunteers like some Ateneans who take part in these strikes,
puts a hold in their career, that instead of earning money for themselves, they choose to fight for
these workers’ rights.
I want to reshare the short story told by the first speaker about the life of a contractual
worker. A contractual factory worker goes to work every day and is immediately treated as a
second class citizen. Bosses will make them work harder than the regular workers.
Furthermore, even though they have already worked for several years, they will still stay as
contractual workers and will never be promoted as a regular worker. They don’t get benefits like
attending parties, free rice, health insurance, etc. Imagine what the effect of this type of toxic
working environment to the workers? Workers would probably be swallowing their dignities
because they believe that if they continue working hard that one day, they’ll be a regular worker
and get benefits. But in reality, it’s like you’re always a new employee because you are limited
only to the minimum wage or most of the time, not even. You get no benefits at all and one day,
you will just die one day without having anything compensation for your death.
The second speaker is Maria Montenegro, a domestic helper in the Philippines, who is
now handling an organization wherein they gather domestic helpers in the Philippines to provide
help through educating them in their rights through various activities. According to studies, the
domestic workers in the Philippines work 12.33 average hours per day, get 133.33 pesos per
day, has no overtime pay, and most of them lack benefits (SSS, PhilHealth, etc). The speaker
shared stories from domestic workers who worked under horrible bosses who don’t treat them
fairly. Some stories told was that some were fed expired food. Maria said that what they want
the most from their jobs were “pakikisama” / employer-employee relationship. Her talk also
made me realize that these domestic helpers are also away from their families 24/7 and instead
of taking care of their own family, they are taking care of someone else’s. Although, one can say
that being a domestic helper might not be as hard as any other job but it is also a serious work
that requires one to sacrifice their time away from their families.
It is very sad to hear about these stories when I am soon to be part of the working world
after graduating. Every one of us is directly involved in this because whether you like it or not,
one day you would have to work under someone’s shoes to earn money and live. Whether
you’re a very well educated Atenean or just a regular worker, or not even a regular worker,
everyone gets affected by this one way or another. Therefore, I believe that there should be
mutualism in the benefits between the bosses and the workers. However, this has not always
been true to all. Too often than not, I believe that capitalism is the main cause of people having
to fight for their labor rights. Big companies are always too hungry for money and that instead of
sharing mutual benefits to the workers, they still choose to not follow the basic law of paying
minimum wages or even treat the workers like real people. There are labor rights issues going
on for a very long time, some like the Jollibee contractualization problem has been addressed a
lot of times but to no avail, these big giants still somehow get away from these issues and
continue to become the big giants that they are right now. These issues will never go away
especially if big giants don’t start to treat these workers right and give them the benefits that
they rightfully deserve. So to start small, I believe that, if one day, we were to hire people under
us, we should not just rightfully give them what’s theirs by law but we should also treat these
people like our own, with respect and kindness, because who are we to control them when we
are all just created equally in the eye of that real big giant we have up there?