Missing: Rights and jobs for the landless rural poor

Per study by the UP School of Labor and industrial relations, more than 80 percent of the employed are informal workers. As pointed out in an earlier column, there are informals in the huge informal sector or informal economy (is/ie). And there are also informals in the formal sector, referred to as the precariat or paid workers with non-regular or short-term tenures in the formal sector.

The informals are clearly a multitude. One cannot miss them. They can be found everywhere in the archipelago, especially in the swelling urban and rural slum colonies in all 17 regions of the country.

The informals are also the most vulnerable in the labor market. They are workers with no regular or stable jobs, and as such, have no regular or stable decent wages and conditions of work.

They do not get any protection from the Labor Code because the Code covers mainly workers belonging to the formal or organized (legally registered) sector of the economy. To be able to enjoy the protective provisions of the Code related to labor standards (e.g., minimum wage and hours of work) and labor relations (e.g., rights to form unions and bargain collectively), workers must show proof that a formal employeremployee relationship exists in a given enterprise.

The problem is that the Philippine Statistics Authority is unable to provide data on the number and socio-economic situation of the different categories of informals in both sectors of the economy. As a result, formulating appropriate policy interventions and socio-economic assistance to help these different categories becomes a bit complicated.

However, the proposed Magna Carta for Workers in the Informal Economy (MCWIE) seeks to institutionalize at least two major policy reforms: the recognition of the right of all informal workers to form and register their own unions or associations to enable them to protect and advance their collective interests, and the recognition of the right of all informals to full and integrated social protection, including membership in the social security system (facilitated by a government subsidy program on premiums).

Per proponents of MCWIE, the following are some of the major worker groups or segments in the informal sector of the economy:

■ Home-based workers who are independent producers of goods or services;

■ Industrial home-workers doing subcontracting work;

■Self-employed engaged by other contractors to do subcontracting work;

■ Ambulant vendors or peddlers who ply their trades in search of buyers;

■ Street vendors who sell their merchandise on streets and sidewalks;

■ Micro store owners or micro stall holders in public and private markets;

■ Transport drivers, including “barkers,” fare collectors and dispatchers;

■ Small transport operators (jeepneys, pedicabs, tricycles, taxis, etc.);

■ Unregistered and unprotected household domestic workers;

■ Informal construction workers hired informally;

■ Workers of Barangay Micro Business Enterprises;

■ Non-corporate cargo handlers and allied workers;

■ Waste pickers and recyclers; Workers engaged in producing seasonal products;

■ Own-account workers doing repair and maintenance of equipment, etc.;

■ Beauticians, barbers, and masseuses in non-registered firms;

“On-call” workers in the entertainment, movie, and media;

■ Volunteer workers in government, e.g., barangay health workers;

■ Unpaid family members, workers receiving allowances;

■ Seasonal workers in micro enterprises and unincorporated household enterprises.

In the formal sector, the informals are the non-regular workers such as the “endos” and the project hires, contractuals, fixed-term workers and so on.

Now a major, major segment in the informal economy consists of the “landless rural poor”. They are rural workers who have no lands of their own nor have leasehold/tenancy rights in the cultivation of the lands of the propertied class. They easily outnumber the small farm owners/cultivators and agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBS) throughout Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The International Rice Research Institute observed as early as the 1970s that the landless rural poor are the fastest-growing segment of the agricultural labor force.

Today, the landless rural poor are clearly the most numerous. “Lumiliit ang sakahan at hindi dumarami ang trabaho” (arable land is shrinking and jobs are not multiplying), a farmer leader observed. The country’s agricultural land has been shrinking due to continuous conversions of farms into subdivisions, commercial zones and “reserve areas” under the “land banking” program of the big realtors and land speculators. On the other hand, good quality jobs in the countryside are scarce because of the country’s failure to achieve industrial transformation and agricultural modernization.

One outcome of the above phenomena is the rise of a large “floating population” of informal workers, who travel from place to place, seeking jobs wherever they can be found, no matter how marginal or seasonal these jobs are. So a landless rural poor can one day be a member of a “cabecilla,” which has a harvesting contract with a sugar or rice farm owner. Another day, he can join a gang of “camote miners” or gold panners. Still another day, he can try landing an informal job in construction projects in far-away cities or urban areas. Remember, the travails of some informal construction workers during the Covid pandemic in 2020-2021 because of travel restrictions and their non-coverage in the government’s “ayuda” program because they are not registered as members of the barangays (where they are renting sleeping/lodging spaces in the homes of urban poor families).

Many of the landless rural poor are children and grandchildren of small farmers and ARBS who have difficulty dividing a one-hectare farm or less among his working-age children and grandchildren. In short, they are not qualified to become beneficiaries of the long-running agrarian reform program of the country.

And yet, the comprehensive agrarian reform program is supposed to benefit them eventually. How? According to the declared CARP policy, the goals of CARP is to help develop rural communities into progressive ones and transform them as platforms for agro-industrial development and job creation. This, unfortunately, is not happening. More in the next issue.