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[av_heading heading=’EDITORIAL | Untapped assets’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”][/av_heading]
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Thursday, March 23, 2017
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THE GRADUATION season is upon us. An estimated one million graduates in colleges and vocational schools face job-skill mismatch, low wages and contractualization, among others. Welcome to the real world.
We don’t want to give this young workforce any false hope. We don’t to discourage them either but these are the issues that confront our new graduates who will become the new breed of the millennial workforce. It is our wish that the wisdom they draw between their hope and the realities around them will guide them through.
Mismatch between skills and the actual jobs available in the market is the prime driver of growing problem on underemployment. The October 2016 round of the government’s Labor Force Survey showed close to eight million workers were in need of another job to augment daily income.
Graduates are also confronted with low entry-level minimum wage. The purchasing value of the current P491 entry level daily wage for workers in the National Capital Region has eroded to P363 a day excluding mandatory social protection salary deductions and transportation and meals expenses, according to the labor group Associated Labor Unions – Trade Union Congress of the Philippines.
Millennial workers are also facing precarious and prevalent job contractualization arrangements. Otherwise known as “555” (five months contract) and “endo” (end of contract), contractualization is a work arrangement where workers are terminated after five months and then re-hired again for another five months.
According to the labor group, seven out of 10 of the current 41 million workforce are contractuals. Workers who were contractuals more than five years ago remain contractuals until today, getting the same entry-level pay without security of tenure and the benefits that they supposed to enjoy. That’s how bad and massive contractualization is.
The challenge to the national government is to create employment opportunities that have good, lasting economic effects on the country’s labor force that is growing each year. We have millions of them whose potentials are waiting to be tapped. Our human resource is our greatest asset.
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