In her shoes

IN

RECENT years during celebrations of the International Women’s Month (March of each year), advocates hold the so-called “In Her Shoes” campaign. It encourages men to be partners in advocating for women’s rights. The campaign is made more dramatic by encouraging men to literally wear women’s stilettos or high-heeled shoes.

Now, the Department of Labor and Employment is taking the campaign to another level – and literally. It is something that salesladies welcome.

The Department is acting swiftly on a call made by salesladies to forbid employers from requiring them to wear high-heeled shoes at work. It has tasked its Occupational Safety and Health Center, the Bureau of Working Conditions and the Bureau of Special Working Concerns to come up with a policy in view of occupational safety and health hazards faced by salesladies in wearing high-heel shoes.

The wearing of high-heeled shoes causes pain and exposes salesladies to the risk of sliding, falling, and tripping off, according to the Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP).

Employed as short-term contractual employees, most of these salesladies have been enduring the pain and the risks caused by wearing stilettos for the entire period of the shift for many years because they will be fired whenever they complain against it. But aside from having no security of tenure, they have no union to help them improve their plight, too.

Apart from wearing high-heel shoes, the Labor department assures workers the future policy will also prohibit employers from requiring salesladies, male and female security guards from standing for long hours in performing their job. Some may view the salesladies’ concern as trivial. It actually isn’t. The bigger picture here is occupational safety. The State has the constitutional mandate to safeguard workers’ social and economic well-being as well as their physical safety and health.