Senator Imee Marcos, please let me explain to you why working 18 hours a day is not impossible, especially for the poor.

Back when I was working in the media as a researcher, producer, and writer, working around 18 hours a day was pretty normal. To demonstrate: If I had a shoot in Batangas City, for example, I would wake up at 4 am for a 5 am call time. We would leave the network’s premises in Quezon City at 6 am and reach Batangas City at around 11 am, heavy traffic included. We would have to shoot everything quickly so that we could leave around 4 pm and be able to get back to the network at around 9 pm, just in time for a late dinner. If it was a weekend, I would have to stay in the building to man the post-production of my story. Usually, post-production takes overnight. On top of that, I also had other writing gigs with looming deadlines. Anybody working in the media can attest to the long working hours that we had to endure.

Despite the ridiculous working conditions that I have just elaborated on, I was, actually, still lucky because at least our building was air-conditioned and I was paid above the minimum wage. But how about the construction workers who have to finish a vanity house or building on a very tight timeline? How about the housemaids who work for the families they serve the entire day? How about the security guards and mall clerks who, after their physically draining round-the-clock duty, also have to commute for an hour or two on their way back home? How about the teachers who also attend personal tutoring side gigs after their shift at school, because they need the extra income to add to their historically low wages? Many of them are living paycheck after paycheck. 

How about the contractual and the freelance workers? Because they do not have the employee benefits that regular employees receive, they have to take on as many jobs as they can to be able to pay their bills, support their families, and keep something for their savings. My best friend and my sister are both freelance workers and they work around 18 hours a day, too; otherwise, they would not be able to meet the demands of their clients and they would not get their pay.

How about the frontline health workers who did not have a choice but to work shift after shift especially during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, because if they did not, people would die? Despite getting a low allowance or additional compensation (with some not receiving any at all) for their extra work, they, too, worked around 18 hours a day to compensate for the Philippines’s limping health system.

Do you think they are “lying” or “stupid?”

Your video is an insult to the millions of Filipino workers who grew up in a country where working around 18 hours a day has been normalized. 

I am not romanticizing working 18 hours a day. It is very un-ideal. But how can we say that to the blue-collar workers – the millions of “LenLens” – who will not have the money they need if they prioritize their ideal work-life balance? For them, their work is their life. That is why they work the entire day because that is all they can do.

Your insensitive and insulting video has shown that you and many wealthy Filipinos remain out of touch with the reality on the ground. You obviously do not have any idea how hard it is to be a working citizen in this country.

We dare you to fill the shoes of a housemaid or a mall clerk, or the shoes of a security guard or a construction worker. Try to do the job of a frontline health worker amid a pandemic with multiple variants infecting thousands of Filipinos. We bet you cannot have the time to sip your tea and shoot another cheap video then.

Your recent blunder has prompted me to look around and see that even many of my friends and relatives are, actually, LenLens, too; many of us are from the middle-class sector and yet many of us are still working around 18 hours a day, and I do not think any of us is lying or stupid about that. 

And because millions of Filipino laborers are forced to work beyond the aspired number of work hours, burnout stopped becoming the endpoint of overwork – it has become the norm, the standard, the base point. Overworking has simply become synonymous with a daily routine.

If there is any good that your video has brought up, it is that people have been insulted. And now that we are insulted, there has been a growing discourse on why we are working for long hours in the first place. You have prompted us to pause for a while and think of the amount of time that we could have spent with our family and friends but had to spend on work instead. You have made us realize that the working system in many institutions is flawed and has to change.

Your slur against Filipino workers is also very timely, too. Now that we are less than three months away from the 2022 Philippine elections, it is high time for us to elect leaders who have concrete plans for workers’ conditions and wages and who have empathy towards people from the grassroots.

For the most part, I abhor your heartless remark against the overworked LenLens. But also, I want to thank you, too, for you have indirectly reminded us to take a closer look at the elitist candidates and see if they are, just like you, out of touch with our reality. – Rappler.com

Juju Z. Baluyot, 29, is a former TV researcher, producer, and writer. He is now a full-time public relations specialist and a part-time freelance writer and academic mentor.