The 25th Hour
There is a quiet contradiction inside many government offices.
Job Order (JO) and Contract of Service (COS) workers are officially described as non-employees — hired for specific services, without the benefits and protections of regular government personnel.
Yet in reality, many of us:
• report to supervisors
• follow office schedules
• meet deadlines and targets
• contribute to projects that keep public services running
In practice, we often function like employees.
On paper, we are not.
Some of us jokingly refer to this gap as “the 25th hour” — the invisible hour that must exist for contractual workers to meet expectations that go far beyond a simple service contract.
Across the Philippines, hundreds of thousands of Job Order and Contract of Service workers support the work of local governments, hospitals, state universities, courts, and national agencies.
Most of us entered public service because we believe in the work.
But belief in public service should not require silence.
For years, many of the concerns of contractual workers have remained private conversations — shared quietly among colleagues but rarely reaching a wider platform.
Perhaps the time has come to ask a simple question:
Should government contractual workers have a collective voice?
Not a movement of confrontation — but a professional, non-partisan National Association of Government Contractual Workers where JO and COS workers can:
• share experiences
• document common challenges
• advocate for fair and transparent policies
• participate constructively in discussions about public sector workforce reforms
Public institutions are strengthened when the people who sustain them are heard.
And perhaps one day, the system will no longer depend on the invisible 25th hour of contractual workers to keep it running.
For now, maybe the conversation simply needs to begin.
#PublicService #ContractualWorkers #WorkplacePolicy #Philippines #PublicSector
