 |
| ON THE JOB Doesn't necessarily mean you're busy |
And because we live in a fast food environment, most of us tend to use busyness, including the imaginary ones, as a shield so we could justify the things we’ve been doing for the past week or so, even though some of it were a total waste of time.
A busy person, more or less, is someone who is not sure of himself, someone who could not reconcile the importance of time as a determining factor in getting the job done. He is not sure of himself because he always sees time as a deficit instead of a delivering element. To determine a really busy person, we need not only scour the setbacks he might probably have, we only need to look at the glaring ones, two factors that are hounding him, and has influenced his perception of being a busybody. A busy person is either doing a lot of overtime work or perpetually suffering an underpaid value. Sometimes, he’s into both.
We always have a penchant for anything quantitative, whether in our work or in the number of times we visit the malls, always taking pride that the more we indulge in an activity, the more it becomes a source of pride in us. But sometimes this busyness also has its own peculiar shortcomings because there's not enough work to be done at some point, and getting a handsome pay is almost impossible to sustain.
Being underpaid is the other extreme of doing overtime for a busy person. At various instances, maximizing your potential, as expressed in your desire to do overtime work, runs counter to that of your employer’s plan of minimizing things, eventually creating a confusion and some conflict of interest which can lead to other agendas detrimental to the work undone. Doing an extended work doesn’t necessarily mean payment in the waiting, most of the time you’re simply doing too much and the economy couldn’t keep up.
So these two animals infesting in our offices can probably do some damage not only to your respective tasks as a busybody, but to the furniture as well, if certain measures are to be neglected. It takes great pains to determine these creatures inside the house, and the chances of you not knowing it, because you’re simply too busy, is so slight and subtle, unless you take a conscious effort to minimize its stampeding act. Needless to say, doing overtime and getting a substandard pay will eventually consume you, and will probably ruin your life.
THE MORE THE MERRIER
IT'S LIKE A VIRUS THAT has contaminated the whole area. Everybody's busy doing some sort of addendum in their routine to compensate the increasing demands of a society in need of some lift. Even in other countries, due in part of the recession that happened a couple of years ago, are also doing their rounds late into the night, making themselves busy, to somehow recuperate the damage brought about by this economic depression that nearly bankrupts a nation and almost lead the world into another crash.
And like all third world countries, the Philippines not only shared their own brand of suffering for so long now but was threatened also as it attempts to ration its basic staple (rice) in order to feed an increasing number of hungry mouths to feed. Many see this as the end of the rope, especially those who have been living a hand-to-mouth existence. But for others whose ambition far exceeded the lingering effects of poverty around them has decided to do some overtime session simply to maintain the equilibrium.
It’s a shame, really. Our government is no longer in the position to save us from the fires of hell. Those who have understood the game immediately packed their bags and went outside, either in the Middle East or somewhere north of the border, and those who have remained in the country remained busy for its sake; undergoing a lot of work just to keep afloat in a sea of inflation and injustices.
Gone are those days when the father just tills the land and the mother simply takes care of the children, most of them are constantly leaving the house so as to secure that much-needed bread. Somehow, overtime work will ultimately save the family, both in earning an extra income and the need of being busy most of the time; otherwise, they’ll end gnashing their teeth trying to reconcile those bills and the enormity of that daily sustenance.
And earning an extra income today is a must. Prices of basic commodities in the market are increasing by leaps and bounds almost every day that sometimes ordinary folks are simply hard put in keeping the score, much less in paying the dues. From gasoline to RTWs to flour, the numbers just keep coming (and growing), and it won’t stop.
Thus, a common clerk, working 8 hours a day, is now forced to stretch, time and muscle, so as to maintain, ironically, a sense of balance in his daily needs and routine. Apart from that, however, consequences could be quite risky, especially now that an increasing number of retrenchments are prevalent even on those institutions that are considered stable. It’s almost like some peer pressure relentlessly forcing you to succumb to it.
Working in this country can be a death march, that’s why many Filipinos go to Japan and dance instead. It makes sense that those who abhor pain, prison, pestilence and abject poverty extend their time abroad even if they are labeled illegal.
Consequently, Filipinos abroad are not exempted; some of them hold three jobs just to keep themselves from stagnation, sustained almost exclusively through supplements and an overriding drive to succeed in life, for the same reason that they can no longer afford the maintaining balance of working back home, that balancing act of poverty and politics. It is a sin to be a sloth in other nations, and as a matter of salvation, you need to work long and hard for you to have some breather. The more you indulge yourself in your work, the busier you are, the happier you become, or so many of us thought.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
THAT IS WHY IT IS so mind-boggling to see someone so overworked, so focused and so busy and yet not getting enough compensation. Somehow our labor laws are so remote from the real score that is going on inside our offices.
Compensation in our workplace is so hard to grow. And because the economy is still trying to get its grips from the severity of corruption committed during the last administration, some, if not most, of these employers are left with no other choice but to scour the dregs of that same transaction, and possibly start from zero.
So there’s always a risk when someone succumbs to an overtime grip, especially in our system, unless you’re sure every detail in your work is covered. Chances are, if certain measures are still hanging in the balance, like not getting enough pay because the company is undergoing some cost-cutting measures, or some other obvious reason that bespeaks of ineptitude and incompetence, then exploitation would come in. And since being underpaid is so subtle, so smooth and so busy in our culture, those who have been under its influence are so deluded and deceived that they are actually doing it for the good of the company.
Two years ago, an estimated 7.1 million Filipinos were underemployed, and considering the effect of that recent global recession, that number will likely stand for quite some time.
We see so many of our fathers busy leaving the comforts of home in favor of the desert or the snow because it promises to be more compensating. We see so many of our women busy leaving their husband’s arm in favor of that overworked Japanese or that under-bathe Arab because it promises to be more sympathetic and satisfying. We see so many of our families busy leaving their roots in favor of this posturing abroad because it provides food on the table. And this crisis, which has been embroidered in the fabric of our economy for decades, is still stitching quite frantically in the clothesline of our workers and laborers.
As a laborer you exist only because you’re simply busy with your work. If you’re paid because you have done a laudable job of doing overtime, consider your work a necessity, if not, consider it a blessing. Yes, many Filipinos are out of work, and the percentage is rocketing to high heavens, but to use one's busyness as a bribe, or a negotiationg piece, which can only be expressed with "if you don't like it here, the door is wide open", then getting enough compensation is anything but promising.
Perhaps it is safe to say that doing an extended work and getting an exhausted wind is a slow capitulation, only this time, the victim, for lack of a better alternative, is a willing participant.
OVER THE DAMN AND UNDER THE DITCH
IT WAS NOT SO SHOCKING that as soon as the Libyan uprising had started barely three months ago, many of our overseas contract workers chose to remain under Gaddafi’s darkness for the sorry reason that the labor situation in our country is a lot darker than the soul of that Libyan dictator.
They have their reasons, no doubt, why they have decided to forego their journey back home, that there are no guarantees, none so far, whether they’d be given a job as soon as they step out of that desert and into that wilderness of unemployment, which our country has an abundance. They don’t want to bet on something that would only lead them in a state of uncertainty.
The diaspora of this nation’s workforce is no longer a statistic, it has become a busy country all its own. There are as many Filipinos living in the Middle East as there are in the island of Mindanao, extended families that are enjoying the benefits of a society that is willing to pay their workforce, not threatened when some of their employees are reaping the fruits of their labor and perhaps more than willing to give their workers a place in the sun.
Our labor situation is no different from that imposed by the friars long before Rizal penned the obnoxious phrase, “Walang alipin kung walang magpapa-alipin.” Like our present day OFWs, some of our heroes in antiquity preferred to study, work and live abroad because they were having a hard time reconciling the inner workings of a society that was supposed to protect and guarantee their rights, regardless if they’re busy or not.
Apart from the alleged prestige that goes with living and working abroad, the only possible reason why such an exodus is still making a busy case against our local employment is the promise of giving these workers something to look forward to, be that a car, a house, and a hefty sum of cash in the bank.
For many years, we pride ourselves of accommodating a multitude of job seekers by providing them with casual items and disposable assignments, trying to form a sense of busyness in them, only to find out that it invariably defeats the purpose since there isn’t any security involved in its dealing. And since it is so hard for you to get that promotion, or even become a regular employee in that competitive office, without the advantages of some extra-judicial means at times, the chances of you being fulfilled is less than encouraging. We are running out of resources, whether in our gold reserves or in our ability to rise up through sheer busyness alone, that this labor question will only bring about an endless discontentment among our laborers, choosing eventually the easy way out, either working outside the country or working illegally.
“The reason you are poor,” Miriam Defensor-Santiago said, “its because you haven’t committed a great crime.” (crime and impoverishment) That hurts.
But if you let your eyes skim through our nation's yellow pages, you’re seeing a public official enjoying the benefits of his office with loads of cash, cars and cliques in so short a time, while someone with a “manager” tag on his sleeve in one of the biggest malls in the country and working relentlessly for 10 hours a day is still commuting in a tight, polluted railway transit in the busy streets of Manila.
There’s certainly some sort of crime in there. In the same way that some of our OFWs risked their lives as drug mules just so to hit the big time, straight up. So damn if you’re busy with your overtime, damn if you’re not, either way, your services are still very much a suspect to that cost-cutting measures we love to justify.
Nobody wants to go home empty-handed after a long day’s work. In fact, being busy has its own excuse for being. It has its own benefits for a person. Physiologically it may bring about some useful routine to his body, in his muscles, in particular. But too much of it and not getting enough in return is not only stressful but exploitative from a labor standpoint.
You deserve a break, too, and, if possible, with pay, while enjoying your time away from your work. Don’t just settle on some junk to compensate your digestive system because you’re having your overtime. Don’t do it the Mandarin way. Your body is your only capital, you can invest on it, too, because at the end of the day, your pension, if you have one at least, can’t cover the lingering sickness you might possibly undergo.
Being busy is good, but sometimes we only need the goods. Doing an extended time in your work and going home empty-handed (to use Santiago’s phrase as a rejoinder), is just like fixing yourself to die. And by that time you reach for your compensation it would be too late, you’ll have to do some extended time on a ditch, where you will be paid under it.
0 (mga) komento:
Post a Comment