POOR working conditions are expected to continue driving more workers to be “overemployed” this year despite the normalization in the labor market, according to a labor group.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) warned that workers will likely suffer from low productivity and life satisfaction if they are left in such a condition.
Sentro ng Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Sentro) Secretary General Josua Mata expressed concern over the latest data of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), which showed the number of employees who worked beyond the international general standard of 48 hours per week has reached 11.21 million last November.
This was 28.7 percent higher than the 8.71 million in the same period in 2021.
The reason most cited by workers affected by overemployment is the desire to earn more; and it is part of the job requirement.
The other reasons are exceptional week; ambition or passion for job; lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic; and other reasons.
“I suspect this trend will continue,” Mata told the BusinessMirror.
“Unless the government starts working to improve the quality of jobs being generated and the wages paid to workers, it is inevitable that working people would have to work longer hours,” he added.
Work-life harm
IN its paper titled “Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World,”the ILO said that overemployment—which it defines as a situation in which a worker would prefer to reduce the actual hours of work with a corresponding decrease in income—is especially harmful to work-life balance.
It noted that overemployment with a corresponding decrease in income can lead to reduced productivity, poorer job performance, and higher turnover and absenteeism.
“Therefore, there is a need to find a policy solution to working-time mismatches in order to support workers in achieving a better work-life balance and better overall well-being,”the ILO said in its 171-page report.
Jon Messenger, lead author of the report, said such solutions should be done through a tripartite mechanism.
“This report shows that if we apply some of the lessons of the Covid-19 crisis and look very carefully at the way working hours are structured, as well as their overall length, we can create a win-win, improving both business performance and work-life balance,” Messenger said.
Philippine context
THE ILO report, which is based on the International Survey Programme of 2015, cited the Philippines together with Sweden and Taiwan (China), Japan, Switzerland, Georgia and Germany among the countries with the highest overemployment.
Labor and Employment Secretary Bienvenido E. Laguesma said the definition used bythe ILO may not apply in the Philippine setting.
“There can be workers who want to reduce their work hours, but not at the cost of decreasing their income,” Laguesma said.
In fact, he said a considerable number of the country’s workers are underemployed—employed persons who expressed the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job or to have an additional job, or to have a new job with longer hours of work.
In the November 2022 round of the LFS, PSA said 7.16 million of the country’s workers were underemployed.
Image credits: Andrii Yalanskyi | Dreamstime.com