Of women working in BPOs and call centers

This BusinessWorld article entitled "Labor concerns in the business process outsourcing industry - Clarifications on night work prohibition" by Leonard Vinz Ignacio caught my attention this morning. Really, I didn't know there's an article in our Labor Code that prohibits women employees to render nightwork.

ARTICLE 130. Nightwork prohibition—No woman, regardless of age, shall be employed or permitted or suffered to work with or without compensation:
(a) in any industrial undertaking or branch thereof between 10 o'clock at night and 6 o'clock in the morning of the following day;
(b) in any commercial or non-industrial undertaking or branch thereof, other than agricultural, between midnight and 6 o'clock in the morning of the following day; or
(c) in any agricultural undertaking at night time unless she is given a period of rest of not less than nine consecutive hours.

Of course, this nightwork prohibition takes into consideration the varying safety and health risks to women on their way to and from, and while inside BPOs and call centers.

Back then (ca 2001), I'd walk to my Ortigas office from a bus stop at Robinson's Galleria. I'd see female agents doing the same. Never had a bad experience. In other areas though, it's not as safe to walk as in Emerald Avenue (and around Ortigas Center) and so you'd have read/heard of police reports on mugging, robbery, rape of mostly young, female call center agents.

Because majority of call centers provide work opportunities without bias to gender (and other factors), BPOs and call centers should be exempted. But as suggested by Ignacio, it may be wise for these companies to secure prior DoLE (Department of Labor and Employment) ruling for exemption, submitting proof of compliance with the facilities and conditions required to ensure the safety and health of women employees working in the draining graveyard shift.

Whether this is actually being done (the observance and compliance to nightwork prohibition), even by the bigger international call centers and BPOs, I tend to think they're not. But I hope I'm mistaken.

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