Job seekers continue to shun construction jobs

By Samuel P. Medenilla, Business Mirror, 18 Feb 2020

Construction laborers are busy putting up a call-center building on Macapagal Avenue in Pasay City. The private construction boom in the Philippines has proceeded apace the government’s “Build, Build, Build” centerpiece program to fill in a serious infrastructure gap. The Department of Finance said the previous government should have exploited the low-interest rate regime in the past to source funds for this.

Profitable, patriotic, but still unattractive for new job seekers.

This was how the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) described the current dilemma of one of the country’s booming sector as it grapples with its lack of new applicants.

Labor assistant secretary officer-in-charge Dominique R. Tutay said new graduates view construction jobs as unattractive since it involves manual labor.

“We always say it is in demand, however, since it will require them to spend long periods in exposed to sun and carrying heavy loads, the new generation are no longer interested in it. This is the same case with agriculture work,” Tutay told BusinessMirror in a interview.

Due to the increasing demand for their services, the preliminary Occupational Wage Survey (OWS) of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed an increasing trend in their average daily wages (ADW).

In its latest OWS, the ADW of construction workers as of Jan. 2018 was at P386.52, which was higher compared to the P379.50 in 2017 and the P356.12 in 2016.

Growing inequality

Former DOLE Undersecretary and Dean of University of the Philippines- School of Labor and Industrial Relations Rene E. Ofreneo, however, said the wage increase does not uniformly benefit all the workers in the construction sector.

He said much skilled workers in the construction sector such as skilled plumbers and electricians command higher wages compared to those, who are doing general construction labor.

This was also confirmed by Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) spokesperson Alan Tanjusay, who said subcontracted workers in the construction industry get between P300 to P500.

“For big licensed and big contractors, they put premium on wages, levelled up OSH (occupational safety and health) standards, and clean living quarters. They give as much as P800 a day to multi-skilled construction workers,” Tanjusay said.

Continuous trend

DOLE earlier said the country will still need at least 200,000 additional new construction workers to address the prevailing labor shortage in the construction industry.

Research, Education and Institutional Development (REID) Foundation Vice President Ronilo M. Balbieran said the demand for construction workers is expected to persist this year and in the coming years especially as more of the administration starts more of its infrastructure projects under its Build, Build, Build (BBB) program.

“You can extract from data the fourth quarter [of 2019] that public construction grew by 23 percent. You can already see they are trying to make up for the delays from the first three quarters,” Balbieran said.

“So you can only imaging the acceleration for 2020,” he added.

Possible solution

To resolve the labor shortage as well as income inequality, construction stakeholders are now pushing to improve the skills of construction workers.

Balbieran said many large construction firms are resorting to the strategy so they could tap their existing personnel to perform multiple tasks.

“These companies are training their workers to make use of new system and technology. Once they are complete the training they are given more competitive rates,” Balbieran said.

Well trained construction workers, Balbieran said, are less likely to be retrenched since companies have already invested so much for their training.

Tutay said as of 2019, there were 4.1 million workers in the construction sector.