FOR THE past few months, the Jollibee in front of the Ateneo campus has been under renovation; and so, for the meantime, the Atenean community has lost access to the fast food chain’s signature “langhap sarap” chicken among other things on its menu. However, a larger issue than its temporary closure calls the community’s attention, causing consumers to flock elsewhere: The food giant’s looming labor issues.
The Jollibee Food Corporation (JFC) employs the most contractual workers in the country with 14,000 unregularized employees as of 2018. In light of this, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) ordered JFC to regularize 6,000 of its contractual employees in April 2018. However, JFC manages to evade absolute compliance because they circumvent labor-only hiring prohibitions by hiring contractors who then acquire contractual workers for their stores.
Last year, upon hearing news about mass lay-offs and JFC’s continual practice of contractualization, netizens condemned the food giant’s actions through the #BoycottJollibee trend on social media.
The rise of the internet and social media have made it easier to communicate messages to wider audiences. As such, this has provided another platform for boycott movements to thrive. Locally, hashtag boycotts against companies that have violated workers’ rights—such as #BoycottNutriAsia—are among the notable movements that have gained traction online. Despite the growing movement, some are skeptical of the effectiveness of boycotts and its online support, claiming that at the end of the day, these do nothing to shake up those in power.
The “why” of the cry
Former Matanglawin Editor-in-Chief and student activist Jessica Gayo (AB LIT ENG ‘19) believes that boycotting is a method of protest that has a unique intrinsic value. “Boycotts are significant in the way the right to vote is significant,” she says. “It gives the majority—the people—the power to hold accountable and question whether the governing body that is supposed to protect them is doing its job.”
However, Sanggunian John Gokongwei School of Management Representative Mica Torres (3 BS MGT) notes that a major hindrance to the boycott movement is the lack of awareness about the power of collective protest.
“For me, public policy and well-disseminated [information] campaigns are more effective in changing people’s views by making them naturally opt for other alternatives instead,” she says. “If we want people to be on board and join the good fight, we need to make them realize why they must join in the first place.”
While such protests typically manifest in person, technological advancements have proven that the movement can be carried over to a different platform. With the internet bridging the gap of communication and information dissemination, it’s no wonder why there has been a surge in political movements.
When “#no” isn’t enough
The public’s use of social media has recently expanded from sharing personal mundanities to disseminating and organizing various political movements. “Workers [used to] rely on their word-of-mouth or their connections with the unions,” Ayroso says regarding the changes in how boycotts operate. “Now, with social media and the internet, it’s easier for them to get the word out, especially with students who are integrating with them and people from the academe to spread the word.”
Online information dissemination then becomes an important component in ensuring a boycott’s success as its strength often relies on numbers. Hashtag boycotts like #BoycottJollibee and #BoycottZagu are only two of the many trends that have garnered significant support on the internet.
However, there have been some criticism regarding peoples’ capability to follow through with their claims. Though many tweet in support of boycott movements, the supposed repercussions from these trending hashtags rarely reflect on the company’s overall profits. It has been pointed out that peoples’ willpower to actually boycott a product tends to be weak, especially if their only platform to sympathize with such causes is on the internet. This is affirmed by JFC stockholder and longtime student-investor Jolo Gutierrez (4 AB MEC), who says that boycotts “hardly make a dent in the stocks of JFC.”
Gayo says that it’s difficult to gauge how many people are reached when they try to disseminate information about a certain boycott, emphasizing that the traction gained by hashtag boycott movements does not guarantee that the general masses are aware and informed of the situation and its severity. She re-affirms that there is no way of knowing if every social interaction truly translates to support for the boycott in real life.
Logging off and taking lead
While hashtag boycotts take the lead in advocating for workers’ rights, there’s more to be done beyond rallying on the streets and on the screens. Political Science Department professor Miguel Rivera explains that boycotts that start and end online aren’t effective in helping laborers because social media is not where the battle lies for worker’s rights—instead, he says that it lies in negotiations between the employee and the employer.
Rivera elaborates that, in order for workers to be regularized, they themselves have to organize and demand regularization. All initiatives besides the aforementioned—from government intervention to hashtag boycott movements—“only [play] a supportive role.”
However, University of the Philippines Diliman student activist and Agham Youth member Alab Ayroso (2 BS BIO) believes in the power of numbers. “[Boycotts] will only be successful to help the strike if a lot of people would do it and [if] the company notices that the workers are on strike,” she says.
At the end of the day, it’s still up to the company’s higher-ups to make administrative changes. Gutierrez points out a harsh reality: Shareholders tend to only ever care about whether or not their investments are making a profit. One such instance would be when Jollibee’s stocks went up following President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision to veto the Security of Tenure Bill. Due to the dismissal of this bill, companies are no longer required to increase their costs for paying benefits. “[Sometimes] what’s good for business isn’t exactly good for people,” Gutierrez said.
Nonetheless, there are still in-government mechanisms where unions can go to seek support.“Arbitration happens a lot in labor disputes. They go to the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) to settle things,” Rivera explains. However, he points out that because workers are easily replaced in a society where high school graduates are plentiful and jobs are scarce, making demands at the expense of getting fired is a risk laborers cannot afford to take.
At the end of the day, social media alone is not enough to incite the changes that our workers need. While social media may serve as a call to action, there is still much more that we can do beyond the echo chambers of the internet. Through actively participating in physical protests, we are able to extend our support and fight the good fight offline—on the streets where the workers’ ongoing battle truly manifests.
