One-third of Philippine jobs from ASEAN will be ‘vulnerable’

MANILA – While the Philippines could get a net 3 million jobs as Southeast Asian nations relax trade and other rules to form the ASEAN Economic Community, more than a third of them could be “vulnerable jobs,” the International Labor Organization (ILO) said.

At 38 percent, that’s exactly the same proportion of current jobs that ILO classifies as “vulnerable,” meaning people working for themselves, without contracts, meaning more likely to have poor working conditions and without the means, such as labor unions, to seek improvements.

The data is in the ILO-Asian Development Bank report “ASEAN Community 2015: Managing Integration for Better Jobs and Shared Prosperity” released Wednesday.

The report says to make the best of the ASEAN Economic Community, the Philippines needs to do five things: create agro-industrial jobs, expand social protection programs, improve basic education and vocational training, improve protections for migrant workers and strengthen collective bargaining — or negotiations between workers and management — to strengthen the link between wages and productivity.

“This report says very frankly there are going be a lot of challenges and it says we as government workers and employers and members of society have to take an active role,” Lawrence Jeff Johnson, director of the ILO Country Office in the Philippines said in a panel discussion.

Johnson was reacting to points raised by Josua Mata, secretary-general of Sentro ng Progresibong Pagbabago (Center for Progressive Change), or Sentro.

Mata asked what was the difference between ASEAN 2015 and previous trade liberalization agreements, which he said cost the country jobs. He also said ASEAN 2015 is designed to help multinational companies with little real protection for workers.

“I’ve heard this before two decades ago before we joined WTO when many of our own economists said if we join the WTO we will increase jobs in agriculture, we will increase jobs in manufacturing and everyone was happy to jump into the bandwagon. But guess what? Today we have an agriculture in crisis, we have manufacturing that just now is starting to pick up again after we were disindustrialized. What is so different about this.”

Overall, Southeast Asia will have a net 14 million new jobs, ILO said.

Meaning, new jobs will be more than 14 million, but some will be offset by job losses as workers and businesses face more competition from their counterparts in other ASEAN countries.

“Distribution of these gains will not be even,” said Sukti Dasgupta, chief of regional economic and social analysis, said at the event. “There is a huge risk AEC could aggravate existing inequality.” –Coco Alcuaz, ANC