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Filipino women workers demand state subsidy
Philippine Daily Inquirer - March 5, 2009
Veronica Uy, Manila – Women workers in the country are most affected by the global economic crisis gripping workplaces they dominate, the workers group Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) said in Thursday's picket in front of the offices of the Department of Labor and Employment.
"More than anybody else, women workers shoulder the heavy burden of the ongoing economic crisis due to lack of social protection from the state and the weak observance and implementation of core labor standards in the country," said PM secretary-general Judy Ann Miranda.
She said job and security are very important to women since having a regular job "is her first and major step in the long journey away from the dark world of domestication."
Miranda criticized the government's theme for this month's International Women's Day celebration that focuses more on entrepreneurship rather than job protection and generation.
"The theme 'Babae, Yaman ka ng Bayan' highlights the women's exceptional role in poverty alleviation, but this merely stresses the self-help economic activities that they have already been doing since time immemorial because of lack of employment," she said.
To alleviate women's worries created by the global economic crisis, Miranda called for an unemployment subsidy for women workers, tax refund for wage earners, health care coverage for displace workers, a reformed public employment program for displaced and unemployed women, and moratorium on demolitions and evictions.
She also echoed her party's call for the reversal of liberalization, deregulation and privatization policies which women blame for the high prices of goods and the deterioration of public services.
Miranda said women workers are disproportionately affected by the ongoing mass layoffs, work rotation, and other flexibility schemes.
To illustrate the issue, Marites Manjares of the United Cavite Workers Association said there were more layoffs in the Cavite Economic Zone in the town of Rosario.
"The overwhelming majority of those laid off and about to be retrenched are women since they are workers in electronics factories," she said.
Pointing out that the country's top export is electronics with revenues of $2.6 billion as of September last year, Manjares enumerated the recently affected electronics factories as: Clarion will retrench more than 200 in March, P. Imes laid off more than 100 last February but the separation pay to be released only this month, Dyna Image cut 400 jobs last January, and N.T. Philippines laid off 400 workers last December.
"With the crisis deepening, the double burden of women workers becomes heavier. The traditional coping mechanism of the workers and the poor is the safety net of family relations but this unduly relies on the unpaid work of women. The double burden means women are exploited as cheap labor in the factories and then utilized as unpaid workers in the home," said Manjares.
"The government must provide the safety net of social protection so that workers and the poor do not rely exclusively on the coping mechanism of family relations and women are not weighed down by the heavier double burden," she said.
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