THE GOVERNMENT JO, THE MOST ABUSED SPECIES IN PUBLIC SERVICE

by Dr. Roger B. Rueda

Let us speak of the government Job Order worker—the employee who works full-time, thinks full-time, sweats full-time, but is paid as if labor were a hobby and survival an optional add-on. The JO is the only creature in the bureaucracy expected to deliver outputs with civil-service efficiency while enjoying contractual security roughly equivalent to a paper umbrella in a typhoon. In ASEAN folklore, this figure is familiar: like the water buffalo (carabao/kerbau) praised for strength yet fed last, or the anak-dalangin of Malay tales who bears the village’s burdens without inheritance, the JO is valorized for endurance while denied protection. This condition is not accidental; it is what sociologist Guy Standing identifies as the deliberate manufacture of the precariat—a workforce kept flexible, anxious, and politically quiet (Standing, 2011).

From the lens of Sikolohiyang Pilipino, the persistence of the JO system is sustained by culturally potent values such as tiis, pakikisama, and utang na loob, which quietly moralize endurance and discourage complaint. As Virgilio Enriquez argued, when survival is framed as virtue, structural injustice is easily misrecognized as personal sacrifice rather than institutional failure (Enriquez, 1992). The JO is thus trapped in a double bind: culturally praised for resilience yet structurally punished for asserting need. Like the aswang’s victim who is told to stay silent lest the village panic, the JO learns that speaking up risks social sanction. In this way, folklore, psychology, and modern labor economics converge—revealing that precarity survives not only through contracts, but through stories we have been taught to endure rather than resist.

They are told, with a straight face, that they are not employees, merely “engaged services.” This linguistic acrobatics allows the State to enjoy their labor without the inconvenience of benefits, tenure, or moral discomfort. In ASEAN folklore, this is the old trick of renaming the burden: like the trickster datu who calls forced labor “voluntary service,” or the Thai phi that drains life at night while insisting it offers protection by day. Words are used not to clarify reality but to soften exploitation. Max Weber would recognize this instantly—bureaucracy rationalizing itself out of ethical responsibility by hiding behind technical language, converting moral questions into administrative categories (Weber, 1922).

From the perspective of Philippine psychology, this denial is made palatable through hiya and pakikisama: the worker is subtly taught that questioning labels is impolite, disruptive, even ungrateful. As Virgilio Enriquez observed, colonial and bureaucratic systems survive by training people to internalize restraint, mistaking silence for harmony (Enriquez, 1992). Thus, “engaged services” becomes not just a contract term but a psychological leash—employment by denial. You work, therefore you exist, but only until payday, and even that is negotiable. Like the folk hero who saves the village yet is written out of the ending, the JO labors in full view, then disappears from the story the moment rights are mentioned.

Government JOs draft reports, manage offices, teach classes, process claims, respond to emergencies, and keep agencies alive while plantilla holders attend seminars on “work–life balance.” Yet when JOs ask for security, they are accused of being impatient, ungrateful, or—my favorite—political. As if wanting PhilHealth were a revolutionary act. Labor leader Leody de Guzman has repeatedly pointed out that contractualization in government is not an economic inevitability but a policy choice—one that transfers risk to workers while insulating institutions from accountability (de Guzman, 2019).

Let us be clear: defending JOs is not an attack on government—it is a defense of its credibility. A State that preaches social justice while running on disposable labor is practicing ideological plagiarism. Karl Polanyi warned that when labor is treated as a mere commodity, detached from human life and social protection, society pays the price in instability and moral decay (Polanyi, 1944). You cannot sermonize about dignity while institutionalizing precarity. That is not governance; that is gaslighting with letterhead.

Some argue, “But they agreed to the terms.” Yes—and people once agreed to indentured labor, too. Consent extracted from economic desperation is not freedom; it is coercion with paperwork. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, through the Capabilities Approach, reminds us that work must enable a life worth living, not merely prolong survival (Nussbaum, 2011). The JO accepts not because the system is fair, but because hunger is persuasive and rent does not wait for plantilla items.

Government JOs are not asking for privilege. They are asking for the radical idea that if you work for the State, the State should not treat you as temporary furniture. They want benefits because sickness is not contractual. They want security because rent is not seasonal. They want respect because patriotism does not pay electric bills. Futurist Yuval Noah Harari warns that societies that normalize worker insecurity in the name of efficiency are not preparing for the future—they are breeding anxiety and resentment (Harari, 2018).

So let us stop pretending that Job Orders are “cost-saving measures.” What they save is not money but conscience—by outsourcing injustice to the most powerless workers. Storyteller George Orwell showed us how systems endure by normalizing humiliation until it feels ordinary (Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933). The JO system survives not because it is right, but because it has been made routine.

Defending government JOs is not charity. It is constitutional housekeeping—the unglamorous but necessary act of sweeping injustice out of the very institutions that claim to uphold social justice. In ASEAN folklore, the house that refuses repair eventually collapses on its own occupants; the bahay na binayaan in Philippine tales rots not because storms are strong, but because caretakers look away. So it is with the State: a government that tolerates injustice within its own workforce cannot credibly lecture the nation on fairness.

As F. Sionil José reminded us, injustice persists not because it is unseen, but because it is tolerated when convenient—normalized through habit, excused by procedure, and justified by silence. Philippine psychology names this dangerous accommodation as sanayan sa mali: the slow training of conscience to accept what should have been resisted from the beginning (Enriquez, 1992). This tolerance has gone on long enough. What began as a temporary arrangement has hardened into institutional neglect, and folklore, psychology, and history agree on one lesson: when injustice is allowed to settle in, it does not stay small—it grows roots.

I hope that they be given at least a minimum wage of ₱800–₱900 a day by 2026, especially in a country where billions are routinely wasted on ghost projects that exist only on paper and in press releases. In ASEAN folklore, the village that feeds its idols while starving its people is always the one cursed with drought; the gods, after all, do not eat cement. Philippine psychology would call this a failure of kapwa: we invest in abstractions and monuments while neglecting the living humans who keep the State running day to day.

Their existence is worth more than any project that never materializes. A road that is never built does not feel hunger. A bridge that exists only in reports does not get sick. But Job Order workers do—and they still show up. As Amartya Sen’s human-centered view of development reminds us, the true measure of progress is not infrastructure counts but the expansion of people’s real freedoms and well-being. If the State can afford billions for nothing, it can afford dignity for those who actually make government function.