Millions of Filipino workers continue to suffer under a labor system that allows contractualization, repeated short-term hiring, and inadequate wages to persist despite clear constitutional and legal protections guaranteeing security of tenure and humane working conditions. These practices strip workers of stability, benefits, and bargaining power, forcing families into a constant state of economic anxiety where basic needs such as food, shelter, healthcare, and education become daily struggles rather than guaranteed rights. The continued failure to fully enforce labor laws enables labor-only contracting to flourish, allowing employers to shift risks onto workers while maximizing profits, a system that normalizes insecurity and treats human labor as disposable. At the same time, wages that fall far below the actual cost of living compel workers to take on excessive overtime, multiple jobs, or debt, leading to long-term physical exhaustion, declining mental health, workplace accidents, and the erosion of family life. This cycle does not only harm workers but weakens productivity, increases poverty, deepens inequality, and burdens public services, ultimately slowing national economic growth and social development. When workers lack security and fair compensation, consumer spending declines, communities stagnate, and future generations inherit limited opportunities. We therefore urgently call on the Department of Labor and Employment, Congress, and all relevant government bodies to decisively enforce existing labor protections, end abusive contractualization practices, ensure the regularization of workers performing essential and continuous functions, implement wage standards grounded in the real cost of living, expand labor inspections, and guarantee protection for workers who report violations. Defending Filipino workers is not merely a policy choice but a constitutional duty and moral imperative, as fair wages and secure employment are fundamental to preserving human dignity, strengthening families, and building a just, resilient, and sustainable Philippine economy

temporary workers represent more than half of wage employment from as high as 71 percent of wage workers as in the case of Pakistan, 67.3 percent in Vietnam, and 53.5 percent in Cambodia. In Indonesia and the Philippines, around a quarter of the wage employees are considered temporary workers.

The ILO attributes the  growth in NSE to the following factors:  (1) changes in the world of work brought about by globalization and social change, including the role of women in the world’s labor force; (2) regulatory changes, including the promulgation of laws that have given incentives for their use by enterprises, and/or gray areas in the law that have provided fertile ground for NSE, and the decline of collective bargaining.

The ILO report identified further the risks posed by non-standard employment for workers, firms, labor and society in the following areas of employment security, earnings, working hours, occupational safety and health, training, representation and other fundamental rights at work. [15]

All of these issues are major concerns for Filipino workers. On the aspect of labor rights, ILO warns that “workers in NSE may lack access to freedom of association and collective bargaining rights either for legal reasons or because of their more tenuous attachment to the workplace. They may also face other violations of their fundamental rights at work, including discrimination and forced labour.

The violations of labor rights are happening in the context of a deteriorating human rights crisis in the Philippines where we have seen direct attacks against workers. As labor leader Josua Mata, Secretary General of the progressive labor center SENTRO elucidated in a recent interview, “ (S)ince 2017, the Philippines has been among the top ten worst countries in the world for workers according to the International Trade Union Confederation’s Global Rights Index, and rightly so. Duterte’s bloody war on drugs created a climate of impunity, leading to the killing of more than 50 trade union leaders since 2016. Only one of these murders went to the courts and is still under litigation. Many more cases of trade union killings and what we call ‘extrajudicial killings’ remain to be investigated