Work hours

x
In which industries do employees work the longest hours per week? by BusinessWorld

Business World has this infographic feature based on the  2017 Gender Statistics on Labor and Employment (GSLE) report released by Philippine Statistics Authority which showed the industries in which employees work the longest hours per week. 

The top 3 spots were Administrative and Support Services, Information and Communication and Transportation and Storage. I'm wondering if the first two implies BPO work, because people I know who work in these industries definitely work more than just 53 hours per week, and does not include the possibility that night/graveyard shifts. I can believe the long hours T&S which may include those driving public transport and those trailer trucks. My father used to drive buses going to the provinces, and we barely saw him, like once a month if we're lucky. 

Meanwhile, the last spots are occupied by Arts, Entertainment and Recreation, Fishing and Real Estate. Again, I'm wondering if AE&R include media production, which is classified as entertainment according to the BIR. People working in media (whether news or TV/movie productions) work far longer hours than 39 included in the survey, and most work on a per project basis. One is not assured of tenure. If lucky, one might get a contract renewable yearly, which features a "retainer's fee" that's more or less the equivalent of the minimum wage or an "allowance" for "brainstorming." Fishing and farming may be seasonal but definitely takes longer hours. 

Included in the bottom half is Education, which supposedly take "only" the traditional 40 hours per week. But it does not take into consideration that teachers and professors do course planning, class output checking, research, consultation with students, meetings and committee work, which together require you to put in more than the 40 hours stated here. If a teacher is tenured, then those hours are paid for by the institution one belongs to. 

Part timers are a different matter. PTs are only paid for classroom hours, or time spent inside the classroom actually teaching. But the real work is what needs to be done before you enter the classroom, and then the output that needs to be checked and graded. One is not paid for consultation hours, or the committee work or the meetings, etc. If one looks at most privately run Higher Education Institutions (HEI), the bulk of their faculty members (or Full Timers) are a mere 25% of the population, and yet whose rates are double those of PTs. The rest (a good 75%) are part timers who sometimes hop from one HEI to another just to make ends meet or make at least as much as the FTs. There is also the possibility that one school term one gets some teaching load or units and the next there's none. It's a precarious job. 

Sometimes it's difficult to look at these surveys, especially when you've worked in the industries mentioned and know the real hours involved aren't just those done at the desk or inside classrooms. 

Government trolls citizens: We got jobs, y'all. Why so choosy?

Do the math.

The government tries to explain the country's unemployment problem by basically telling its citizens to shut up and just take on any job.

DOLE Public Information Office Director Nikon Fameronag made public a study by its Bureau of Statistics that the Filipino jobseekers are "maselan" and "mapili sa trabaho," ie, too choosy and sensitive about the work they want to do. Fameronag identifies most of these applicants as new graduates, and even offers them advice: "Huwag maging maarte sa pagpili ng trabaho dahil ang mahalaga ay maranasan muna nila ang pagtratrabaho sa isang kumpanya." 

I wanted to excuse the report's fingerpointing, given that this report comes from the tabloid Remate, and not Fameronag's actual words. But I looked for other reports on the subject and found a report from the Philippine Star's PangMasa, this one just a little bit tame but still rather unfortunately worded. 

Both reports go on to say that the government does its share, by posting anywhere from 34,000 to 40,000 jobs on its PhilJobNet website. Surely, any one of those jobs can be taken on by any random Filipino jobseeker. What it all comes down to is that a representative of the government  blames the unemployment problem on what amounts to be the "bad attitude" of its labor pool. 

I looked at PhilJobNet's  top 5 vacancies: call center agent, service crew, cashier, sales clerk, production/factory worker. 

But if one checked out the "Top Skills" postings, the #1 job in offer is that of factory worker at 2,399 jobs on offer. Rounding up the Top 5: cashier (2132), service crew (2123), and sales clerk/sales lady in the high thousands. Call Center Agent only comes in at #12 at 386 jobs and Customer Service Assistant is at #15 with 352 jobs. 

An interesting aside: PhilJobNet only has two openings for shoemaker, and only single offerings each for "indexer"--whatever that is, valet, author, museum guide, telephone switchboard operator and aquaculturist. 

All of the Top 5 Jobs/Skills are at the opposite sides of the job spectrum. Call center jobs require at least a high school diploma or some college education, plus English language proficiency. Factory workers need material skills specific to whatever is produced by the factory doing the hiring. It also doesn't take into account the profile of who qualifies as unemployed, or as the article so gracelessly noted, the "tambays" in the statistical study. And what of the term "tambay" which has a widely negative connotation, ie "person who only finished grade school and may possibly be a delinquent and/or have never had a legitimate job ever." 

Meanwhile, "unemployed" covers a wide swath of people, who could be anyone from "New college graduate" which is different from "OFW transitioning to the local job market" and which is radically different from "only finished Grade 5." 

It does not take into consideration that every job posting requires a very specific skill set that may or may not apply to Jomar who only finished high school or Marilen who only had three semesters at the city college. And what of the aquaculturist? How many people studied that one in college? Or god forbid, acquired the skills and knowledge set for it by apprenticing? 

But inherent in this report that makes reading it infuriating is that the government is assigning the blame to the unemployment problem back to its constituents instead of creating more jobs. Why so choosy? Just take whatever job is there. Unless you want a country of robots, that's never a good idea. And even if you manage to convince millions of people to just give up on choice and the ability to create a good life for themselves, at some point all this will come back to haunt you. 

You want statistics? There are 40,000 jobs for a country with a population of 100 million. Assuming that only 40M are in the active labor pool, that's maybe a 1: 1,000 chance that your skills fit the job. Or let's make it more concrete: PhilJobNet through its website lists 123,928 applicants. There are only 97,610 vacancies. What are the chances any random Filipino job seeker has a shot at that? It still falls short of the target. 

So, why so choosy? Because this is a democracy, and by extension, a capitalist society, if you want to view it that way, where people are allowed to craft a life that is good for themselves. Unfortunately, the government we elected thinks so lowly of  its citizens and don't deserve a shot at a decent livelihood. It's basically trolling us: "Lolz, u fools! You'll take whatever crap we give you." It reeks of irresponsibility, of a government that washes its hands off its inability to supply the need of its people, and somehow symptomatic of a leader who technically does not need to work a day in his life. It almost makes you wish for a revolution to happen, if only to have a chance to rid the status quo of incompetents.