* – It’s from a Rage Against the Machine song.  Please bear with me.

I’d like to throw my hat into the whole hubbub about mainstream media and blogging taking place right now here at Filipino Voices, but somehow, I feel the urge to voice out something.  I’d like to talk about Filipinos who live on their voices.  I’d like to talk about a generation of young Filipinos who, in more ways than one, never see the Sun.

I was reading the news online when I came across this snippet of news: Accenture is going to lay off 500 workers because of a “redundancy” program.  I don’t know what “redundancies” are, and I’m sure this is a necessary move for many BPOs and call centers in the country.  I am not one to tell the call center and outsourcing companies what to do, or what measures to take, to save their businesses.  It’s just that too many things can hit you in the gut, in the stomach, in the mind, and in the heart.

Most especially if it is your generation involved here.

Faced with economic crises, there have been so many young Filipinos in the outsourcing industry who felt the brunt of the global recession in the worst way: to lose the one job you can possibly have, in a country with very little in the way of national industry.

I admire the knack of people who see humor, perhaps even hope, in the lot of being a “callboy” or a “callgirl.”  There’s this interesting Youngblood piece by Pamela that discusses the travails and (mis)adventures of being a call center agent.  Perhaps there are some people who view outsourcing – and their futures – without the anger that I have for myself, and laying down the same smackdown for any one of my friends who’ll listen to the frustration I’ve always held about young, educated, brilliant people tethered to machines doing the menial work of Information Age factories.

True: there are many, many call center agents out there who see their call center jobs as temporary sources of income, or a stepping stone to a better career.  However, it is also true that this seemingly temporary career choice is increasingly becoming a very permanent prospect.  If the call center or the BPO is the first job available to you when you graduate, you take it; the reason being that there are not a lot of career options available.

The problem has so many facets and causes, but I think the biggest problem is the inability of The Government – and society in general – to generate and perpetuate national industry.  Generating jobs and employment that benefit society, as well as sustain needs, is something we all are responsible for.  Yet it is quite obvious that this is not exactly a high priority for The Government, which chooses to extol and pimp out something as economically unsustainable as outsourcing.

Yet on the human side of things, the biggest failing society has against the Call Center Generation is how it transformed the minds and the bodies of the youth: stress, smoking, drug addictions, insomnia, and for very few – but for those very significant – those who walk the line into death or perhaps even psychological stability.  Members of a generation who start to define their humanity in terms of Venti mocha frappucinos and partying, members of a generation who put their place in society as another failed project of Rizal’s “ang kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan.”

And now, many of them are losing their jobs left and right.

This is for the people of the sun: night-shifters who work the lines at the dead of night, while people half a world away benefit from their labor.  Those who live that Dick Whittington dream only because they work in glass-covered office condominiums.  Those who work like machines for hours, and only become humans when they punch out and look for that beverage or coffee that “rewards” them of their hard work for a rather low pay.  The people of the sun who want to fight, but have to save their voices to get fed.

The people of the sun who have, will, or would, lose their jobs because of a world that failed them.

My rage turns to heartache as I write this entry, knowing fully well that the legacy of my generation is not in changing things, but answering calls and becoming employees for offices half a world away.  No assurances, no security, living in that alternate reality where day is night, and night is day.  A generation exposed to the grim realities of racism, underemployment, abuse, decadence, hopelessness, mediocrity, abandonment… where no one spares laway for them.

As a blogger and as a writer, this is all I can do for them.  Right now.

The people who spend endless hours in artificial light, work morning to night.  This is for them.  I write this for them.

This is for the people of the sun.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function p75HasVideo() in /homepages/39/d169067170/htdocs/voices/wp-content/themes/NewFV/single-default.php on line 57