Poverty and jobs

One of the manifestations of poverty is not having a job. If, together with President Noynoy, we think that our main objective is to reduce poverty, then the immediate objective is to create jobs. Joblessness is partly cause and partly the result of poverty. At present, unemployment is a world-wide phenomenon. We are fortunate in this country that our workers are in demand in other countries. This has become an escape hatch for the lack of employment in our country. There are at least eight million Filipinos in temporary jobs overseas. This can wreak havoc on the Filipino family and does produce problems for the family. Not having a father or, worse, not having a mother to take care of the family produces all sorts of problems. The immediate problems can be endured to some extent but the future dire effects of such break-up of families are not or cannot be assessed at present. This is the result of the poverty we all have to help overturn in our country. Why should we have poverty when we are so well endowed by nature and we have such excellent human resources? Why?

Besides having no jobs to pay for subsistence of the family, poverty also puts a crimp on the economy. People do not have buying power to enhance the economy. The top 20 percent of the country have more than what they need for the normal necessities of life, like food, shelter, health, education, and some luxuries. But it is the next 60%, mostly wage earners, who have to increase their income in order to help the economy. We need investments but also more income, more savings, more buying power. Our problem is not only the bottom 20% that suffer hunger once in a while but also the middle 60% who have needs but cannot buy. Coming from a non-monetized and semi-feudal economy, we are not used to demanding higher wages in monetary form. In the semi-feudal arrangements of the past, the whole relationship is personalized and it would be demeaning to demand or, worse, demand monetary compensation.

We are still suffering from our past. Foreigners or others, who did not go through this relationship of the kasama, can exploit this relationship without really meaning to. This past experience results in disadvantages for the worker. This past results in a stinginess in the giving of wages and salaries.

Low salaries become a source of dissatisfaction as the workers see the stores and buildings, and companies of the top 20 percent multiplying while salaries do not increase proportionately. The rich may not be at fault but the relationship of the past puts a crimp on the monetary remunerations. How is that?

There is a reluctance to make demands as well as reluctance to offer beyond the traditional. At present the market, or supply-and-demand relationships, is in favor of the owners and not the workers. We need to increase the demand for labor so prices will go up for labor. We are emerging from the personalized relationships of the kasama but not yet in the operation of the impersonal working of supply and demand. There is the need to feed the hungry but more important is the need to create jobs, and the need to create a middle class who do the work and become entrepreneurs.

For this quality education is critical and we have a long way to go. About a third of our students are not able to finish the six grade of the elementary there is very little we can do in giving them jobs. If our students finish high school, it is better but finish college is even better. Where do we start? The entrepreneurs have to start businesses, the educators have to give quality education, the parents have to keep their children in school until they finish, the business owners have to give higher salaries where they can, workers to demand better salaries, but work so that their higher salaries are earned.

Finally, we all have to practice spiritual poverty which means even though we may be billionaires, we must remember that our property is just lent to us by God for at most a hundred years. What we own is not ours. They are for our use to adore God and help our neighbor. Those, therefore, who have the means should not hoard it but take the risk of creating employment for our countrymen. And those who work should do work with discipline that they earn what they are paid for. We will always have the crippled and the blind and the helpless that need our charity. But sometimes it is easier to give to charity than to help create jobs and employment. <emeterio_barcelon@yahoo.com> –FR. EMETERIO BARCELON, SJ, Manila Bulletin