External Labor Flexibility:
The Philippine Experience

External labor flexibility is defined as the ease or difficulty with which firms can modify the size and composition of their workforce to respond to the changing economic environment.

The practice of external labor flexibility includes temporary layoffs, greater reliance on casual, contractual, temporary or parttime workers, and contracting out employment.

There are two opposing views on the issue of external labor flexibility.  One view holds that greater labor flexibility would promote job opportunities because it discards labor market rigidities.

The other view claims that a more flexible labor force implies more workers in jobs that are less secure in terms of income, work status and employment stability.

There are two objectives of labor flexibility: the need to stimulate growth in employment through more flexible forms of labor, and to promote secure and regular forms of employment.

About 40.5 percent of surveyed establishments reported having experienced employing temporary workers in the past two years.  Most of these firms belong to the electronics industry, are large-scale and foreign-owned.

Establishments in the construction and wood industries were most likely to employ contractual labor, due mainly to cost factors and market uncertainty.

About 47 percent of firms employing parttime workers reported that the workers were hired to fill in professional and technical positions.

One out of five establishments resorted to labor subcontracting, majority of which were large-scale, foreign-owned and export-oriented. 

Child workers in factories involved with the manufacture of pyrotechnics are constantly exposed to harmful chemicals.  These factories are found mostly in Central Luzon, Western Visayas and Central Visayas (Regions III, VI and VII, respectively).

Exposure to chemicals through commercial fertilizers has been observed in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR).

Deep-sea fishing of the “muro-ami” type is being practiced in the waters off Cebu Island, but this is consistently being thwarted by advocates of child rights.  Reports also have it that this illegal fishing methods is clandestinely being done in Palawan and Mindoro.