Labor & employment, SONA 2012

Sona 2012: Reviewing Aquino’s “Social Contract” and performance (Part 1)

Aquino promised “inclusive growth” that creates jobs at home. After two years, his administration has turned out to be the largest exporter of Filipino workers (Photo from inquirer.net)

On job creation

On June 30, President Benigno Aquino III will mark his second year in office. Then on July 23, he will deliver his third State of the Nation Address (Sona). How do we assess his performance so far? One approach is to gauge Aquino’s achievements vis-à-vis the promises he made to the people in 2010. This series of articles reviews the performance of the President in terms of his campaign promises on improving the economy and the living condition of the people.

Promises

As reference, we will use the document “A Social Contract with the Filipino People”. In this document, then presidential bet Aquino outlined his platform of government. We will also refer to the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2011-2016, which details how Aquino plans to implement his so-called Social Contract.

Among others, Aquino promised to transform national leadership:

  1. From a government that merely conjures economic growth statistics that our people know to be unreal to a government that prioritizes jobs that empower the people and provide them with opportunities to rise above poverty
  2. From relegating education to just one of many concerns to making education the central strategy for investing in our people, reducing poverty and building national competitiveness
  3. From treating health as just another area for political patronage to recognizing the advancement and protection of public health, which includes responsible parenthood, as key measures of good governance
  4. From government policies influenced by well-connected private interests to a leadership that executes all the laws of the land with impartiality and decisiveness
  5. From treating the rural economy as just a source of problems to recognizing farms and rural enterprises as vital to achieving food security and more equitable economic growth, worthy of reinvestment for sustained productivity
  6. From government anti-poverty programs that instill a dole-out mentality to well-considered programs that build capacity and create opportunity among the poor and the marginalized in the country
  7. From a government that dampens private initiative and enterprise to a government that creates conditions conducive to the growth and competitiveness of private businesses, big, medium and small
  8. From a government that treats its people as an export commodity and a means to earn foreign exchange, disregarding the social cost to Filipino families to a government that creates jobs at home, so that working abroad will be a choice rather than a necessity; and when its citizens do choose to become OFWs, their welfare and protection will be the government’s priority

These Social Contract commitments can be categorized into five: (1) Job creation; (2) Provision of social services; (3) Poverty reduction; (4) Agricultural development; and (5) Promotion of private business.

New jobs

Aquino criticized the Arroyo administration for conjuring false growth statistics. In his PDP, Aquino said that his government will aim for inclusive growth. This means economic expansion which translates to more jobs. The PDP has specifically set a target of one million new jobs every year, based on an annual growth of 7-8% in the gross domestic product (GDP).

Using official data from the National Statistics Office (NSO), the average number of jobs in 2010 was about 36 million. It increased to 37.2 million in 2011 and to 37.6 million this year. Aquino, thus, has “created” around 1.6 million new jobs or 800,000 a year. This seems impressive considering that the GDP grew by an average of just 4.5% a year during the period.

But the additional jobs are negated by the increase in the size of the labor force. From 2010 to 2012, the labor force grew by 1.6 million, the same volume as the increase in the number of jobs. Hence, official unemployment did not improve during the period, remaining at more than 7 percent.

Dismal quality

Further, the quality of additional jobs remained dismal. Of the 1.6 million new jobs, more than 800,000 were produced by the services sector, characterized by highly irregular, less productive employment. They include jobs covered by “endo” (end of contract) and “5-5-5” schemes, where workers are hired under rotating 5-month contracts. Aquino has rejected proposals to fully ban contractualization, along with the ₱125 wage hike bill, claiming they will create “more problems”.

Also, more than 500,000 of the new jobs were self-employed and unpaid family workers. This implies that almost a third of jobs created were a result of workers’ own efforts to cope with limited employment opportunities. Meanwhile, underemployment, which captures the unsatisfactory quality of present jobs, increased by about 149,000 from 2010 to 2012. Estimates

Of course, it could be argued that low quality jobs are better than no jobs at all. But what Aquino promised are new jobs that empower the people and give them the chance to get out of poverty. To be sure, part-time, insecure or unpaid jobs do not allow workers to be productive enough and improve their miserable condition. Worse, jobs being created are not only low quality but also insufficient in relation to the burgeoning labor force.

Flawed count

It does not help that NSO data on employment tend to understate domestic job scarcity. Official methodology counts as employed those who “worked” for even just one hour in a week, which artificially bloats the number of employed. On the other hand, it excludes as unemployed the job seekers who are unavailable for work despite an opportunity due to illness, family obligations, etc. This falsely deflates the number of jobless.

Aquino is aware of this anomaly. In one of his press briefings prior to official proclamation, he said one of the first things he will do is to clarify how government counts the jobless. This, according to Aquino, will let government design a more reliable employment program. Alas, Aquino chose to continue the unreliable NSO methodology began by the Arroyo administration in 2005 in an obvious attempt to hide the worsening jobs crisis.

Deteriorating crisis

Fortunately, independent surveys, such as the one regularly conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS), provide us a more dependable picture of the domestic labor market. In its latest (March 2012) survey on adult unemployment, the SWS reported that 34.4%, or about 13.8 million workers, are jobless. Using SWS surveys, it appears that the incidence of unemployment is worst under Aquino, averaging 26.8% in his first two years. During the term of Gloria Arroyo, it averaged 19.6%; Joseph Estrada, 9.2% and; Fidel Ramos, 10.3 percent. Unemployment is on its way to triple its level from just two decades ago.

The current jobs crisis is the result of the accumulated impact of decades of defective and destructive economic programs implemented by previous regimes such as trade and investment liberalization, neoliberal restructuring of agriculture, etc.

Aquino is not expected to fully reverse this long-term trend of deteriorating job scarcity in two years. But instead of laying down the groundwork to address the jobs crisis such as reviewing and scrapping laws that liberalized key sectors of the economy, it’s business as usual under the Aquino administration.

No industrialization plan

Export-oriented, foreign capital-dependent industries that are vulnerable to global boom and bust continue to be promoted under the PDP 2011-2016. Local micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which account for around 61% of employment, remain marginalized as policies continue to favor big and foreign corporations.

There is no plan to reverse trade and investment liberalization that destroyed local industries and jobs, especially MSMEs. There is no industrialization plan anchored on vibrant domestic production and consumption. MSME development is still geared towards linking them to the highly volatile foreign markets and as subcontractors of mostly foreign firms. Thus, the potential of MSMEs to massively and sustainably contribute to domestic job creation remains greatly hampered.

Also, Aquino does not have a genuine land reform agenda, which is another program that can create a huge number of jobs. Instead, he has been promoting public-private partnership (PPP) in agriculture that tends to displace farmers and farm workers, while peddling the deception of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extenstion with Reforms (Carper).  (More on this in a separate article.)

Largest exporter of workers

Indeed, this administration does not have a comprehensive and sustainable job creation plan to speak of. Contrary to the Social Contract’s pronouncement that it will create jobs at home and will not treat our workers as export commodities, Aquino has turned out to be the largest exporter of Filipino workers among all Presidents. In the past two years, Aquino has aggressively pursued new bilateral deals with various countries to create additional market for Philippine labor export. It has recently lifted the deployment ban in politically turbulent countries like Libya, Sudan and Nigeria as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) show that the deployment of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) under Aquino has already reached around 1.4 million a year. During Arroyo’s time, annual deployment was pegged at 1 million; Estrada, 0.84 million; Ramos, 0.69 million; and Cory Aquino, 0.47 million. OFW deployment has already almost tripled since the administration of Aquino’s mother.

Neglecting OFW welfare

Worse, Aquino has been remiss even in his commitment to ensure the welfare and protection of OFWs. Migrante International noted in a report that the 2012 budget for OFW welfare and services has been cut by ₱792 million. Per OFW, the Aquino administration is allocating a measly ₱262 for welfare and services. Meanwhile, it is collecting a huge ₱20,000 from each OFW for various fees and taxes.

Aquino’s neglect of migrant workers is further illustrated in the inept evacuation of OFWs from MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries undergoing political turmoil, not to mention the four Filipinos executed abroad in the past two years.

Part II: How the rich is getting (scandalously) richer under Aquino

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