The General Alliance of Workers Association condemned the recent “workers’ happiness” survey released by an online job research company as preposterous and detached from reality, a press release from GAWA said.
This report ignores the daily suffering of thousands of workers, especially delivery riders and drivers who bear the brunt of job oppression and exploitation. They travel against time and extreme heat just to meet quotas and deadlines imposed by apps and platforms. They are treated as “independent contractors” to deny them basic rights, yet they are controlled like employees through algorithms and penalties, it said.
These delivery workers have no social protection. No guaranteed minimum wage, no overtime pay, no holiday pay, no security of tenure, no health and accident insurance, no pension. When they fall ill, get into accidents, or are deactivated without due process, they are left alone. Their motorcycles break down, their bodies break down, but the system does not, the press release said.
To call this sector “happy” is an insult. The so-called happiness measured by online clicks cannot capture the fear of deactivation, the exhaustion from 12-hour shifts, the debt from fuel and maintenance costs, and the humiliation of being penalized for forces beyond their control like traffic, weather, and customer complaints, it added.
The survey serves only to legitimize a business model built on precarity. It provides cover for platforms and government agencies to delay regulation and deny workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively, it said.
The 1987 Philippine Constitution declares that labor is a primary social economic force. Yet delivery workers are treated as disposable. This is injustice.
GAWA demands the following: immediate recognition of delivery riders and drivers as workers entitled to labor standards under the Labor Code; mandatory social protection coverage through SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG, with contributions shared by platforms; regulation of algorithmic management to end abusive quotas, arbitrary deactivation, and unsafe working hours; and inclusion of delivery workers in wage boards and tripartite consultations so their voice is heard, not erased by online surveys.
GAWA calls on the Department of Labor and Employment, the Department of Trade and Industry, and Congress to act now before more riders collapse on the road in the name of “convenience.”
The truth cannot be crowdsourced through a platform. It is on the streets, under the sun, in the exhaustion of workers who keep the economy moving while being denied dignity, it added.*
