Missing the turn somewhere

‘Nationally celebrating Labor Day as the equivalent of bargaining at the level of the firm is concrete proof this failing.’

THE yearly Labor Day ritual has become almost pathetic. Workers march with red banners flying, pressing for a bigger slice of the economic pie. The government showers them with crumbs, in the form of so-called "non-wage" additional benefits. At the end of the day, the workers return to their wretched existence; on the morrow, officials return to their desks, congratulating themselves for another May 1 that proved to be uneventful.

Now, we are not suggesting a return to the days of confrontation and uneasy accommodations. Certainly not to that Labor Day observance of close to a quarter of a century ago when President Aquino sat at the Quirino Grandstand with Jose Ma. Sison by his side.

The crumbling of the old familiar ideologies – and we include the labor and the social democratic movements here – has left a vacuum, in the workers’ self-understanding of the social role they play. The state, just thankful the days of an assertive labor are over, is happy enough to comply with the habitual tokenism expected of it.

Both workers and the government, clearly, are in the limbo as to the central concerns that must be addressed and the tasks falling on their shoulders.

Nowhere is this more underlined than in the fixation of both on wages. Workers groups demand P125 increase in wages. Government balks, knowing business is in no position to accommodate the demand. The result is invariably a stalemate.

But what about the more basic issue of jobs creation? What does P550 a day in wage profit the workers if their children of working age could not find jobs?

The minimum wage is, for example, a barrier to entry into ranks of the employed. If one is willing to work for, say, P200 a day instead of spending his waking moments shooting the breeze at the street corner and there’s a small businessman who sees an opportunity to make a profit hiring an idle hand the same rate, why should government stand in the way of these two people who are both willing to strike a deal and make a contribution to the overall economic output? The added value created may be small in each case but aggregating these small contributions surely means a substantial enough amount of goods and income created.

It is not as if we have to re-invent the wheel. Our closest neighbors have leaped ahead in wealth creation. Comparing ourselves with Thailand (the country closest to us in terms demographics, resource endowments and level of development 40 years ago) is now an embarrassment.

We must have missed the turn somewhere. And nationally celebrating Labor Day as the equivalent of bargaining at the level of the firm is concrete proof this failing.

Editorial: Missing the turn somewhere Malaya May 2, 2011