Labor Day, and the work that does not rest

By Herman M. Lagon

Labor Day in the Philippines has always carried two moods. On the surface, it looks like a pause—banners, speeches, maybe even a long weekend if one is lucky. It feels like a moment where work politely steps aside. But beneath that is something quieter, something most workers don’t really need explained. Work does not actually stop. Bills don’t pause. Rent doesn’t wait. And the kind of labor many Filipinos move through each day—the anxious, uncertain, sometimes invisible kind—doesn’t really pause for occasions like this. It continues, barely noticed. So maybe this Labor Day, the real question is not about celebrating work—but whether it still feels meaningful enough to celebrate.

Because if you linger on it, even just a bit, something feels slightly off. The data says things are improving. Unemployment stays close to five percent, depending on when you look. On paper, that reads as progress. But outside the paper—on jeepneys, in offices, in campuses, in markets—you hear a different story. People working longer hours. People juggling two or three jobs. Still coming up short. You hear graduates who did everything right but still feel stuck. Parents quietly deciding which bill can wait this week. It’s a strange contradiction: more people are working, yet more people feel like they’re barely getting by.

Part of it has to do with the kind of work that exists. Employment is easier to count now, but harder to believe in. A sidewalk vendor is “employed.” A rider pushing 16-hour days just to break even is “employed.” A Job Order worker renewing contracts every few months is “employed.” The word itself has stretched so much it almost loses shape. Because employment, as many experience it now, no longer guarantees stability or dignity—or even enough to live on. It simply means you’re doing something, anything, to stay afloat.

This is where older ideas begin to feel oddly familiar again. Not in a textbook way, but in a more personal sense. Marx talked about alienation—workers being separated from the value of what they produce. It sounds abstract until you look around. A jeepney driver completes dozens of trips, but after fuel and boundary, only a little is left. A BPO worker meets every metric but worries about being replaced by the very systems they help sustain. A teacher finishes task after task but feels farther from the reason they chose the job in the first place. A farmer works the land from morning to dusk, yet still depends on the next harvest to get by. A fisherman goes out before sunrise, but the catch is never certain. Work continues, but something inside it feels thinner than before.

Capitalism, for its part, hasn’t disappeared. If anything, it has become more fluid, harder to pin down. It adapts. It finds new forms. It offers opportunity, convenience, even growth—but often with costs that quietly land on the worker. Gig platforms promise flexibility, but the costs—fuel, upkeep, time—fall on the rider. Companies automate not to remove work, but to trim it—fewer roles, more expected from each. The system doesn’t promise fairness. It promises continuity.

So we end up somewhere in between. Marxism critiques. Capitalism keeps moving. But neither quite explains how things feel on the ground. It doesn’t feel like a system anymore—just steady adjustment. Learning, coping, moving as things shift. Not by choice. Stability isn’t something you count on now. It’s something you try to hold.

Technology, especially AI, has made that clearer. It’s often framed in extremes, but reality sits in between. Jobs aren’t disappearing, but they’re changing in ways that feel uncertain. Tasks get automated. Expectations change. Workers are asked not just to do their jobs, but to keep reinventing themselves. Skills don’t last as long. Roles shift midstream. And for many, especially those with limited access to support, it doesn’t feel like opportunity—it feels like trying to keep up with something that won’t stay still.

For our workers, the situation is even more layered. Migration is still an option, but not always a safe one. Around 2.3 million work abroad, many still exposed to risk. At home, contractualization persists. Informal work remains common. Wages continue to lag behind daily needs. What you see is a workforce that keeps adjusting—filling in what the system cannot quite provide.

And still, it feels too easy to say there is no future. Because if there’s one thing that holds through it all, it’s this quiet ability to adapt. To find a way. You see it in the rider who studies routes to save fuel. In the student picking up digital skills outside formal education. In the Job Order worker doing today’s work well while quietly preparing for something more stable. These are not dramatic acts. They don’t announce themselves. But they accumulate. And over time, they matter.

Still, resilience should not be mistaken for resolution. Without real protection and fair systems, it falls short. People shouldn’t have to keep adapting just to survive. If Labor Day is to matter, it has to ask: What kind of work are we building? And who carries the weight when it doesn’t work? Who benefits when things go right? And how do we make sure that progress does not quietly leave people behind?

Because in the end, the future of Filipino labor will not be decided by any single “ism”—not Marxism, not capitalism, not whatever comes next. It will come down to choices. Policy choices. Institutional choices. Everyday decisions about what—and who—we value. Whether we treat workers as expendable inputs, or as lives that need to be sustained, not just used.

Labor Day goes beyond looking back. It asks us to pay attention now—and be honest about what comes next. Not idealistic, just clear and grounded. Because the Filipino worker has never really been the problem.

The question—quiet, but persistent—is whether the system is finally ready to work for them.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.