MAKING FUTURE HARVESTS WITHOUT CHILD LABOUR

MANILA, Philippines (ILO Online) – Rudy is the fifth in a family of seven children. At 15, he dropped out of high school to help his father on the farm. His two elder brothers had died in a tragic accident shortly before.

Rudy felt he was duty-bound to help provide for his younger siblings. “I was afraid that my younger brother and sister would also have to quit school and work because we didn’t have enough money”, says Rudy.

According to a survey conducted in 2001, more than 60 per cent of working children aged 5 to 17 work on farms in the country. An estimated five million families depend on seasonal contract work on sugarcane plantations, which causes many children to drop out of school.

In Western Visayas, the country’s leading sugar producing region, 88.3 per cent of families with working children earn below P10,000 (US $ 200) a month – every hand, therefore, is needed to improve the family income.

Working for long hours under the scorching heat of the sun, children risk hurting themselves with the ‘spading’, the local name for the large heavy machete used in cutting sugarcane. They are also exposed to chemicals and fertilizer which they handle with their bare hands.

In 2006, the ILO’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) partnered with the Sugar Industry Foundation, Inc. (SIFI) to address child labour in Western Visayas. SIFI is a Philippine foundation where sugar farmers, sugar mill owners and representatives of farm labourers come together to address the concerns of sugar workers.

Under the IPEC-SIFI program, working children were given technical skills training and scholarships for further schooling while over 100 family members working on sugarcane farms participated in seminars to enhance their business skills.

Rudy joined over 80 others who were given skills training. After a 75-day, on-the-job training in a company that leases heavy equipment for construction work, Rudy was hired by the same company as a mechanic assistant. As Rudy is still under age 18, tasks and conditions are still to be monitored since he is not to do dangerous work according to ILO standards on child labour.

Agriculture is a sector where many children are effectively denied education which blights their future chances of escaping from the cycle of poverty by finding better jobs or becoming self-employed.

“The rural sector is often characterized by lack of schools, schools of variable quality, problems of retaining teachers in remote rural areas, lack of accessible education for children, poor/variable rates of rural school attendance, and lower standards of educational performance and achievement. Children may also have to walk long distances to and from school. Even where children are in education, school holidays are often built around the sowing and harvesting seasons”, explains Michele Jankanish, Director of ILO-IPEC.

Agriculture is also one of the three most dangerous sectors in which to work at any age, along with construction and mining. Whether child labourers work on their parents' farms, are hired to work on the farms or plantations of others, or accompany their migrant farm worker parents, the hazards and levels of risk they face can be worse than those for adult workers.

“Because children’s bodies and minds are still growing and developing, exposure to workplace hazards can be more devastating and long lasting for them, resulting in lifelong disabilities. Therefore the line between what is acceptable work and what is not is easily crossed. This problem is not restricted to developing countries but occurs in industrialized countries as well”, says Jankanish.

She emphasizes, however, that not all work that children undertake in agriculture is bad for them or would qualify as work to be eliminated under the ILO Minimum Age Convention No. 138 or the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention No. 182.

“Age-appropriate tasks that are of lower risk and do not interfere with a child’s schooling and leisure time are not at issue here. Indeed, many types of work experience for children can be positive, providing them with practical and social skills for work as adults”, she says.

On the other hand, working children represent a plentiful source of cheap labour, often at an early age. Most statistical surveys only cover child workers aged 10 and above, but children under 10 are estimated to account for 20 per cent of child labour in rural areas.

Not all of them are as lucky as Rudy’s younger brother and sister. Today, Rudy is no longer afraid that his two siblings may quit school to work in the sugarcane fields.

“I am happy that I can give money to my parents to send my younger brother and sister to school,” he says. For the ILO, agriculture remains a priority sector for the elimination of child labour.

“For agricultural and rural development to be sustainable, it cannot continue to be based on the exploitation of children in child labour. Unless a concerted effort is put in place to reducing agricultural child labour, it will be impossible to achieve the ILO goal of elimination of all worst forms of child labour by 2016”, concludes Jankanish.

ROLE REVERSAL:
WHEN IT COMES TO WHO WORKS THE LONGEST HOURS,
MANY PHILIPPINE WOMEN ARE THE GLOBAL EXCEPTION

MANILA, Philippines (ILO Online) – When Liza’s 5-year old son starts crying and begging her not to leave for work, her heart bleeds. Everyday, the marketing executive travels one hour to a Manila hotel where she works more than 60 hours a week preparing client presentations and sales reports. Back home, a nanny spends the day looking after her son. And at days’ end, Liza finds herself with little time left for the family.

Celine, on the other hand, is another story. After working 15 years as certified public accountant and bank manager, she quit the corporate world for her two daughters after her husband urged her to stay home due to concerns over the girls’ poor performance in school.

Liza and Celine are two examples of how women in the Philippines are struggling to balance work and family life. Most would be willing to work if they had no family obligations. But for others with children at home, the conflict between working time and family life is a heart-wrenching choice.

“Compared to men, working women tend to spend more money on education and better nutrition for their children. At the same time, they help to create jobs for domestic workers”, says Linda Wirth, Director of the Subregional Office of the ILO in Manila.

In the Philippines, women increasingly work in services, call centres and the electronics industry. Employers think women have better skills and aptitudes for this type of work. Driven by the lack of other opportunities, women tend to accept long working hours to earn more.

“Overtime often doesn’t draw any extra pay, driving workers to work even longer,” says Ms. Wirth. “In the Philippines work is often paid at a daily instead of an hourly rate.”

Yet women in the Philippines are not the only ones accepting longer working hours. A new ILO study says an estimated 22 per cent of the global workforce, or 614.2 million workers, are still working more than 48 hours a week – considered excessive – often merely to make ends meet.

What’s more, the study also finds a clear “gender gap” in working time.

“Men tend to work longer average hours than women worldwide, with women working shorter hours in almost every country studied. Moreover, men are more likely to work longer hours than women, while women are far more likely to work shorter hours (less than 35 per week) than men”, says Jon Messenger, Senior Research Officer for the ILO’s Conditions of Work and Employment Programme and a co-author of the study.

According to Mr. Messenger, the Philippines are an exception to this rule. The new ILO study finds that employed women are two to three times more likely than men to work exceptionally long hours in paid work, sometimes more than 64 hours per week.

“I think the situation in the Philippines is a very interesting phenomenon. On the one hand, we do not have the gender gaps in working hours that exist in most countries. However, given the long hours of paid work of many Filipino women, an important question is how they can balance work and family. We want to see both women and men working reasonable hours, and in the case of countries like the Philippines, that means fewer hours for both sexes,” Mr. Messenger says.

He refers to the double burden women carry with their paid jobs and unpaid domestic work: “It is crucial to provide men with incentives to share these family responsibilities more equally.” Shorter hours, the report says, can have positive consequences including benefits to workers’ health and family lives, reduced accidents at the workplace, as well as greater productivity and equality between the sexes.

The study suggests reducing long working hours lessens the risk of occupational injuries and illnesses, and their associated costs to workers, employers, and society as a whole. It also calls for policies to help workers combine paid work with family and domestic obligations. These include flexi-time, emergency family leave and high-quality part-time work in line with the ILO Part-Time Work Convention.

“Almost a century ago, the ILO adopted the first international labour standard on working time. Today, the question of working time is still as pertinent as it was in 1919. We have to be aware of the detrimental effects of long working hours for families, children and society. Working women like Liza and Celine should not have to choose between their career and their family. It is a matter of creating an adequate work-life balance for both women and men”, concludes Linda Wirth.

Sangheon Lee, Deirdre McCann and Jon C. Messenger, Working Time Around the World: Trends in working hours, laws and policies in a global comparative perspective, ISBN 978-92-2-119311-1, ILO, Geneva.

FORMER CHILD WORKER FINDS A NEW LIFE

Emer used to be a child worker having no choice but to work at an early age due to extreme poverty. Her parents have been tilling the land they do not own for years. Their meager income makes it difficult for the couple to make both ends meet. In her desire to finish her studies and not to be a burden to her family, Emer decided to work in the farm to support her family and her own education. Though balancing school and work was hard.

After high school, she began to look for a job and prepared herself to any employment offer that would come her way until a friend invited her to work as househelper which she willingly accepted just to support her family. Yet, the expected income did not come while she received nothing but work and more work. Tired, she left her employer, moved to another job yet ended up roaming the streets, nearly abandoning all hope. She set out to find a job but found herself in a center for children. She felt that her dream of alleviating her family's condition suddenly went up in smoke.

Things started to change when she noticed life in the center. Emer became contemplative, preferring to observe and learn from the experiences of several children. She began to examine her experiences and self-discovery became the vehicle that carried her on.

Emer received a scholarship grant and finished her Diploma in Applied Computer Studies. When asked what she plans to do with her life, she gave the same response -- to secure a better future for her family and get them out of poverty. It may sound idealistic, but with enough determination Emer is likely to make her dream a reality.

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EXCERPT FROM: Evangelista, A.D. (2004). Bata Man. Philippines: Institute for Labor Studies. 11-14pp.

EXTENDING SOCIAL PROTECTION TO WOMEN IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY

Josie Lipio nods in agreement. Most of us are forced to borrow money because we cannot afford the cost of health care for our families.” Thirty-eight years old with five children, Josie is a home-based worker who weaves beads onto clothes and makes chocolate to earn a living.

“Most of the time, we only need outpatient services,” explains Mary dela Cruz, a 44-year-old home-based worker and vendor with four children. “Unfortunately, our rural health centre rarely has adequate medical supplies and the occasional medical mission can only provide limited supplies.”

“Based on consultations and surveys, we identified that one of the most urgent needs of the informal sector in Angono, Rizal is access to health care,” according to Rey Tan, officer-in-charge of the Mayor’s Extension Office and a member of the Angono Informal Sector Task Force. Sixty percent of the 80,000 households in Angono belong to the informal sector, most likely comprising the biggest sector in the municipality’s population, explains Rey.

Government may lack funds, but not commitment says Rey. “The people in the informal sector who work so hard to put up a micro-health insurance scheme do not receive any salary, but they persevere day in and day out. With their help and government’s commitment, I think financial constraints will not be a problem.”

Rey feels confident that once people realize that the project provides long-term and meaningful benefits to the informal sector and their families, they will join and work with our team.”

The project Rey is referring to is helping allay the fears of Josie, Emily, Mary and other women like them who comprise the informal sector in Angono, Rizal.

“Extending Social Protection through Health Micro-Insurance Schemes to Women in the Informal Economy” is funded by the Norwegian Government and delivered by the ILO in Nepal and the Philippines. The project is working with the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in assisting five (5) farmers’ cooperatives providing health insurance benefits to their members; it is also collaborating with the Local Government Unit of Angono, Rizal to help workers’ associations establish a health insurance programme.

Angono, Rizal is where STEP has been involved in all phases of the project from inception to setting-up and implementation. STEP assiduously worked with existing social capital, integration of services, skills and knowledge of all possible stakeholders, mainstreaming gender, and developing the scheme so it could eventually link with the national health insurance program through the LGU.