A labor leader has called on workers in the technology-business process management (IT-BPM) sector to join or create labor unions so that workers “can have a voice” in the workplace and secure better wages and benefits for themselves. Gerard Seno, executive vice president of the Associated Labor Unions Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) also urged industry echelon “to look at forming unions as a way to promote productive workforce that provides better services and products.”
There is a method to the labor leader’s call because the IT-BPO industry has become very robust, employing close to 800,000 and accounting for $13 billion in revenues as of 2013. The figures grow day by day and in the current year, the IT-BPO is expected to generate $15 billion income and 1 million work force.
In sum, the IT-BPO is a gleaming field for trade unionism, but why are the yuppies in the infotech business not biting?
Trade unionism worldwide is declining. In the Philippines, trade unions are generally perceived as irrelevant, obstructionist and have not really secured much in terms of better wages and other benefits for workers.
In the United States, the situation is no different.
Writing for the online resource Labor Law, Perry Heidecker recently wrote “the percentage of workers in the private sector who belong to labor unions has shrunk to 6.9 percent. This is the lowest rate of union membership in America since 1910. Despite the expenditure of vast amounts of money, effort and government influence by the labor movement, this trend shows every prospect of continuing.”
How did union membership decline so much?
Heideker cited four reasons why trade unions often seem irrelevant. For lack of space, I will yield to the one reason cited by the American author that, when closely analyzed, is the reason why the Philippines and India have become hubs of IT-BPOs.
“In good times, workers don’t need unions to secure increases in wages and benefits because everybody profits from economic prosperity. In bad times, unions can’t protect their members from layoffs, wage and benefit reductions and tougher working conditions. In fact, union contracts often seem to make things worse. The high cost of union labor is often cited as a contributing factor to the demise of many companies. Whole industries have fled the United States, attracted by the lure of cheap foreign labor.
Other industries struggle to remain competitive.”
So do yuppies in the BPO sector have no alternative other than the option offered by organized labor?
Certainly not.
Our young workers should consider joining the social economy by setting up self-help organizations or cooperatives because as economic models, co-ops are democratic and have proven to be resilient even in the global economic collapse of 2007 and 2008. As business models, co-ops thrive in the hard work and creativity of members, not on their political influence.
Recently in Co-op TV (Saturdays 6 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. over CCTN Channel 47) I had the privilege of chatting with Tekton Entre Multi-Purpose Cooperative officers led by Antonio Felipe, Roberta Verano and Ronnie Morales. The core business of Tekton Entre is labor outsourcing which caters to food-based establishments, mostly fast food chains spread all over the country.
According to Verano, who sits in the Co-op’s board of directors, Tekton has recruited more than 2,000 co-op members who are now deployed as service crews of a popular fast food that operates in Visayas and Mindanao.
Tekton is actually an offspring of the Catholic lay movement Couples for Christ. The CFC based in Manila operates a co-operative which has remarkably grown in membership and assets. In 1999, the Manila CFC urged its Cebu counterpart to put up its own co-operative because one fast food chain got so impressed by the workers trained by the CFC co-op in Manila that the company placed a premium on applicants belonging to the movement.
The Tekton Entre training embodies standard Co-operative education based on Christian teachings which, taken collectively is the core of Co-op values, namely self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of the global co-op movement, members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.
In Tekton Entre, Co-op members/workers are also owners of the enterprise. In other words, there is a compelling reason for them to work hard to make the co-op prosperous because it will redound to the good of all including their families and communities.
This may be a scenario made in heaven but organizations, human as they are will always have problems; but if you own an enterprise, will you strike against it?
Next month, the IT-BPO industry is gathering top-level business executives and key stakeholders around the globe to address current industry trends in an international summit with the theme, “Drive Change. Shape the Future”.
Organized by the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), the annual event to be held in October 13 to 14 in Manila is expected to draw “high-level resource speakers, analysts, domain experts and government officials from both the private and public sectors”.
The IBPAB website says the summit aims “to present and examine pertinent global issues and emerging trends relevant to the IT-BPM industry” but I don’t see anything in the agenda that points to workers’ welfare.
It is time for workers in the IT-BPO sector to seize the day and secure their future. There is no other route that offers the greater good, except the co-operative system. My friend Joe Detablan of VICTO National will be glad to answer queries on Co-op training and information through 253-1317 and 254-0602.
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