Articulación de la educación media-técnica

Like my trisikad driver, significant numbers of people in Davao and Mindanao are struggling to make a living through formal and informal labour. The economic aspects of Philippine society are among the most significant in shaping people’s life chances, and the strategic choices that individuals and families deploy to improve their situations. In

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labour trafficking and sex trafficking are related. Some have argued that as sexual labour is another type of work, making a distinction reinforces the “moral outcry” over sexual labour in general (Alvarez & Alessi, 2012; Bettio, Della Giusta, & Di Tommaso, 2017; Peters, 2014). Others have pointed out the distinctions between various types, such as the specific relationship between sexual trafficking and other forms of gender-based exploitation and violence (Acharya, 2015; Aluko-Daniels, 2014; Efrat, 2016; Patterson, 2012; Turner, 2012). However, the constraints and pressures in and around work also create conditions that are linked with human trafficking and other types of exploitation and abuse in work and beyond. The factors which make labour, particularly certain types of labour, a point of vulnerability, emerge from factors beyond the individual workplace to both social and structural conditions.

Human trafficking has often been studied as a distinct phenomenon. However, this

approach can easily obscure the incidence of related conditions such as exploitative labour, and position human trafficking as unrelated to other forms of exploitation. The aim of this chapter is to explore the processes which contribute to the experience of work as unequal and vulnerable. Gender, social status, education, and age are factors that are magnified in the experience of work and contribute to vulnerability as well as exclusion from

opportunities. Access, or lack of access, to sufficient and legitimate employment

opportunities is a significant factor in understanding human trafficking both from the side of the perpetrators and from those exploited.

The concept of structural violence is useful in considering work as it provides insight into the problem of inequality and abuse in work without drawing firm lines between “normal” work, exploitative work, or human trafficking (Farmer, 2004; Kodoth, 2016; Lee, 2016; Smith, 2015). It also emphasises that the inequalities and constraints are experienced, not as inconvenience or risk, but as violence against a person and their life. Working conditions in the Philippines, particularly the job insecurity and low wages, have been fruitfully

considered through frameworks including neoliberalism, globalisation, and precarity (Bitonio, 2008; Chant & McIlwaine, 1995; Edralin, 2016; McKay, 2006; Ofreneo, 2013; Oh, 2016; Tremlett, 2012). However, exploitation and abuse go beyond the

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support “systemic exploitation” (Kodoth, 2016, p. 86). Here I emphasise the way that the ongoing and day-to-day condition of uncertainty in employment situations contributes to the experience of structural violence which shapes life choices and life chances.

A common wage for full-time, skilled workers such as DonDon and Mariel’s husband (Ch.9) in Davao was ₱500 ($15 NZD) per day, but participants described how this was not enough to sustain a family of five, particularly given the costs of schooling for children in high school or tertiary programs. Nurses in private hospitals, even with the extensive training and licencing required, have been reported making ₱3,000-8,000 ($82-219 NZD)/month, or ₱100-266 ($3-7.50 NZD)/day, while caring for 30 patients in their shift. Legally, all nurses are theoretically entitled to about ₱26,000/month (₱867/day), but this 2002 legislation has never been implemented nor enforced, and efforts have been

continually blocked by politicians (Badilla, 2016). The largest employment sector,

however, is unskilled labour, and this is true for both men and women, (PSA, 2016b). Note the employment advertisement from Davao (see Figure 16) which advertised ₱250-500 ($7.50-15 NZD)/day, offering a pay scale that started well below minimum wage. Poverty, and its uneven distribution both locally and globally, has been repeatedly identified as a form of structural violence (Farmer, 2004; Muderedzi et al., 2017; Smith, 2015; Vogt, 2013). This assessment draws attention to the violence intrinsic to the day-to- day experience of poverty as well as the ever-present risk of catastrophe if unexpected costs arose (Clark, 2014, pp. 27, 33; Simmons, 2010, p. 11). The poverty line set by the

Philippine government, at or below an income of ₱60 ($1.60 NZD) per day, is listed as the minimum for food and additional costs, but in real life is not actually sufficient for basic needs and would barely cover one day’s meals (Ofreneo, 2015, p. 125; PSA, 2016a). Even the shortest jeepney rides, for example, cost ₱8 or more; a return trip to and from work could constitute, at the very least, over 25% of that ₱60. In context, when I was in Davao, we could get a small rotisserie chicken from a street vendor for ₱100 ($2.60 NZD) for our family’s dinner. The World Bank, however, has set the international poverty indicator at $1.90 US, or about ₱98, and Ofreneo suggested that by a measure of $2 US/₱101, as of

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2009 half of the population was living in poverty.54 _{This assessment is supported by the}

vast squatter settlements in Manila that exceed official counts, the fact that 55% of the population was rural as of 2010, and the 2012 USAID analysis of 19.2% of Filipinos living in “extreme” poverty below US$1.25/₱64 per day (Dy-Liacco, 2014; Ofreneo, 2015; PSA, 2016a). Low wages and the prevalence of poverty have shaped the multiple economic strategies families use to survive.

These economic strategies frequently include work that is highly insecure, variable and low-paid. The number of trisikad drivers parked and waiting, for example, as there were behind the elderly driver I described, demonstrates the limitations of unemployment and underemployment statistics. Although in 2017, the official unemployment rate in the Philippines was 5.7-6.6%, Ofreneo (2015, p. 122) has argued that “more than half of the employed do not actually have adequate and decent work” when accounting for part-time workers, unpaid family workers, and those seeking additional work (PSA, 2017a).

According to the Philippines Statistics Authority, as of 2016, 33.5% of the labour force was part time, 8.6% were “unpaid family workers,” and an additional 8.1% of full-time workers were actively seeking additional work, making a total of 55.9% of the population

unemployed or underemployed in 2016 based on Ofreneo’s method of analysis (PSA, 2017c, 2017c). Additionally, the percentage of “unpaid family workers” is likely underestimated, as, for example, “housewives” are excluded from the labour force statistics. One wage is not sufficient for a family to survive, but as opportunities are limited, many families rely on multiple low-paid income streams such as an informal

tindahan [small shop] or one member running a trisikad [tricycle].

The informal economy also plays an integral role, especially in poorer areas, but as of 2016, estimates indicate that over half of employed workers were also involved in informal

economic strategies (Ofreneo, 2015, p. 123; PSA, 2017a).55 _{Small shops and stands sell}

54 _{I was unable to find more recent comparable data; most of the PSA’s poverty and income measures are}

based on family income, which obscures the individual incomes of family members (PSA, 2016a).

55 _{The statistics Ofreneo cites suggest that up to 77% of employed workers are also involved in the informal}

economy as of 2006; the statistics I located from the PSA are comparable, but list one fewer category which likely accounts for the discrepancy between the figures. I have used Ofreneo’s method of calculation, which includes “unpaid family workers” (8.6%), self-employed (27.6%), and running a family business or farm (3.2%), as well as the underemployed (18%) who are presumably currently relying on relational or informal economic strategies, for a total of 57.4% (Edralin, 2016; PSA, 2017a).

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single packets of coffee and biscuits, and necessities such as charcoal, and cough medicine. Trays of small fresh fish appear in the afternoons once the catch has come in and made its way from the docks to the barangays. Hawkers walk around carrying bunches of second hand shoes, others weave between traffic stopped at lights and in rush hour to vend bottles of cold water, back scratchers, dash ornaments, and snacks, especially to the taxi drivers who might not have had a break. The informal economy is highly visible and entwined with formal day-to-day economic practices.

In navigating structural violence, Clark (2014, p. 36) pointed out that low-wage workers frequently depend on “fragile survival strategies,” which often rely on social networks through reciprocal and relational exchanges. This practice extends the integrated and social sense of self in Philippines culture to what McKay (2009, pp. 330, 343) referred to as “relational, rather than individuated, models of economic personhood” (Milgram, 2014, pp. 166–167). McKay (2009, p. 341), for instance, described how a community in the

Visayas56 _{considered people prosperous, not because of their own resources, but because of}

their relationships with productive family members. Pastors, nuns, and other community leaders play a key role in the informal social economy in terms of redistribution of resources, particularly in times of hardship or distress. One of my language teachers, for example, was also in this role, and on one occasion while I was at a lesson was asking me and her other students for a few lessons advance payment so that she could help a family with the costs of a funeral. A large part of the Philippines economy is informal and semi- formal, and is critical to the survival of low wage workers and those outside of formal employment.

The Philippines has robust employment laws which address workers’ rights to fair wages, termination and disability benefits, reasonable hours including breaks, overtime, non- discrimination including equal pay, and the right to join unions (DOLE, 2011, 2013). Further, the labour and anti-trafficking laws prohibit unreasonable child labour, bonded labour, threats and assault including both physical and verbal abuse, and also prohibit employers from firing employees to avoid paying benefits such as maternity leave (DOLE,

56 _{See figure 3; the Visayas is the neighbouring region to Mindanao, which shares a common first language.}

Cebuano and Visayan are among the many terms which refer to the primary language of the southern Philippines.

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2011, 2013). Despite these laws that should protect workers’ interests, however, workers often cannot access the laws’ potential as there is limited and ineffective enforcement to the point that non-compliance is the norm (DOLE, 2011; Hutchison, 2016, p. 184) Hutchinson (2016, p. 185) traced the limited power of workers and workers’ associations to the

longstanding oligarchic control despite the ostensible democratic political system. Documented legal cases suggest that companies’ power is reinforced by legal structures. Departing employees, for example, are not entitled to their retirement or severance payments until they have signed a contract releasing the company from further

requirements. Financial pressure due to this delayed payment has resulted in employees agreeing to lesser amounts than what was due, and unable to legally challenge their

employers once documents were signed (Bersamin, 2015; Mendoza, 2013). As employment standards are not widely enforced while competition for jobs is intense, there is a high level of tolerance of abuse and control under these conditions. Controlling work situations have thus been normalised as part of wage employment, and situations of human trafficking represent the extreme forms of powerlessness among workers.

Figure 14: “Wanted 10 Girls 18-25 yrs old Apply inside”

Women are more often socially positioned as “domestic” and expected to extend their supposedly inherent qualities and abilities to the workplace in jobs that replicate home

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duties and service, embodying and reiterating social inequalities; at the same time, as for men, the largest employment sector was in unskilled work, which is the lowest paid but also least regulated area, the site of many dubious employment practices (see Figure 14 for a “suspicious” job ad) (PSA, 2016b; Yap & Melchor, 2015, p. 277). A common

requirement for women workers is that they have a “pleasing personality” and are “willing to be trained” (San Beda, 2017) (see Figure 15). Although statistics list women and men as having roughly comparable employment rates, this does not include the fact that only 50.1% of women are considered part of the labour force but does include the 57% of unpaid family workers who are women (PSA, 2016b). This means that women who are retired or “housewives” are not counted as unemployed, but women working in family businesses or agriculture are counted as employed, despite the fact that neither has any personal income, which suggests that women’s rates of employment are significantly overestimated.

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Figure 15: Job advertisements in Davao City. Note requirements that include gender, height,

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The Philippines’ employment conditions have become increasingly precarious (Bitonio, 2008, p. 26; Frenkel & Kuruvilla, 2002, p. 402; Gonzaga, 2009, p. 49; Kuang-Jung, 2001; Oabel, 2015, p. 214). Irregular and unreliable work hours, underpayment, and

underemployment, are a few of the trends that have been reported (Edralin, 2016;

Hutchison, 2016, p. 188; Ofreneo, 2013; Sale & Sale, 2014, p. 344). Numerous people told me about how employers would often dismiss and replace their entire staff of service workers every few months; one participant told me about a relative who struggled to survive with jobs lasting for three months only. Workers are often hired on temporary contracts short enough to avoid providing full-time positions and accompanying legal benefits, or hired on contract through an external agency with the same results (Bitonio, 2008, p. 26; Edralin, 2016, p. 2; Hutchison, 2016, p. 188; Ofreneo, 2015, p. 126). Another tactic employers use is the “trainee” provision where new staff can be paid 25% less than the minimum wage for up to two years; Ofreneo and Hernandez (as cited in Ofreneo, 2015, p. 126) found, for example, that at one electronics company in 2010, about 19,000 of the 20,000 workers were classed and paid as trainees. Other complaints from unions include the per-unit pay where workers are only paid per sale (commission) or unit produced such as in garment factories (Ofreneo, 2015, p. 127).

In formal employment, the strict demands and requirements of employers have created a certain “ideal worker” in job application requirements. The shortage of jobs means that the ideal worker has been defined very narrowly – in service sectors, for example, workers are often sought who are female, under about 28 years old, university educated, physically attractive, polite and deferential. As there is a “labour surplus economy,” employers easily discriminate against women, older people, youth, and disabled people (Edralin, 2016, p. 2). I would often see and hear job advertisements which included not only details about

acceptable gender and maximum age, but also height requirements.57 _{The job advertisement}

for SM with its cardboard cut-out exemplifies this specificity, with their sought female worker being aged 20-26 while having already completed a four-year tertiary course (see Figure 15). Once employed, workers must comply with a long list of rules and

requirements. Common stipulations that I heard about included the following: workers will

57 _{For example, I heard a radio advertisement for male and female security guards requiring that females were}

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be financially penalised for each minute they are late to work; mall stores’ employees are forbidden to shop in the mall; workers may not bring a bag along to work (in case of theft); (female) workers must wear prescribed makeup as well as the uniform which often includes a short skirt, nylon hose, and high heels. Local business analysts, for example,

recommended closer direct monitoring to increase productivity, to the point that any

conversations with co-workers had to be written down (Portus & Martinez, 2015, p. 3468).

Figure 16: Job advertisements. Child attendant must be single, age 18-23; the other ad offers a pay range starting below minimum wage.

The power of employers comes from several sources: the scarcity of jobs overall; the lack of the government’s will and/or ability to address workplace rights, contract and payment abuses, or health and safety issues; and the tenuous position of low-wage workers where even a short time without work could mean disaster. Hannah’s children (Ch.8), for example, were forced to drop out of school when her health meant that she, as the

breadwinner, could not work for a period. Court documents suggest that when employees have tried to sue their employers for unpaid wages and benefits, appeals from employers are common, increasing the costs to wronged employees and limiting their ability to see out the process (Bersamin, 2015; Mendoza, 2013). Although court cases for employment infractions are often successful, the limitations of the judicial system mean that this process

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can take years, which benefits the employers; settlements awarded are often less than even the entitled pay without other benefits and court costs that the employee has lost (Bitonio, 2008, p. 29; Hutchison, 2016, p. 187). Employment relationships also draw on a history of colonial and patronage relationships where people have simply had to adapt to survive and benefit under those in power (Seki, 2015, p. 1273). The threat of a nebulous, unending supply of precarious, desperate workers willing to accept poor conditions and low pay further informs the relationship between employers and employees.

Structural violence is part of social structures beyond one aspect of life or institutional relationships, but also cumulative and comes from multiple sources simultaneously which maintain oppression (Farmer, 2004). The position of low wage workers is reiterated and internalised through mechanisms such as the “fatalism” that many Filipinos express about their futures, the essentialising of women as domestic and servile, and the lack of high paying jobs in the Philippines as compared to overseas (Aligan, 2016; Parreñas, 2007, 2013; Rutten, 2007). Further, the power of “shame” in this “face”-based culture has been demonstrated as a factor preventing workers from challenging their working conditions, supported by attitudes and practices that reinforce the inferiority and servitude of the poor to the rich and powerful (Rutten, 2007, p. 56; Seki, 2015, p. 1273).58 _{The lack of informal}

and formal social mechanisms for addressing working conditions has meant that workers “are left to negotiate structural violence in individual ways, perceiving violations of rights as part of everyday struggles to hold on to their employment or resorting to employment as informal/illegal workers” (Kodoth, 2016, p. 86). The normality of low-paid work with substandard working conditions indicates structural violence in employment conditions which maintains the position of the poor in Mindanao.

DonDon’s story below illustrates a few of the ordinary struggles that workers have to deal with in attempting to benefit from their work. His experience of financial exploitation in his work is followed by Gabriel’s story. Gabriel experienced human trafficking in the form of extreme labour exploitation. Although these stories are quite different from one another, they both demonstrate how labour conditions are shaped by employers but also by the

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wider Mindanao society where both worked. After this, Melissa’s story demonstrates how informal labour relationships can also hide and maintain abuse.