WHAT’ S BEHIND THE FIRE? AN OVERVIEW OF NEOLIBERAL FACE OF ALORICA

 COMPANY PROFILE: ALORICA

GLOBAL HEADQUARTER: 5161 California Ave, Suite 100, Irvine, CA 92617, USA.

FOUNDING YEAR: 1999 

CURRENT CEO:  Mike Clifton 

SERVICES:  Customer Experience (CX), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). 

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Introduction and Corporate Overview

The global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry has become a critical pillar of contemporary service economies, particularly in developing countries such as the Philippines. As organizations worldwide seek efficiency, scalability, and enhanced customer engagement, BPO firms have evolved from providers of basic call center services into sophisticated partners delivering end-to-end customer experience (CX) solutions. Within this highly competitive and rapidly transforming industry, Alorica Inc. has emerged as one of the most influential and expansive players, shaping both global outsourcing practices and local labor markets.

Alorica is widely recognized as a leading provider of Business Process and Customer Satisfaction Outsourcing solutions that span the entire customer lifecycle—from customer acquisition and onboarding to technical support, retention, and customer loyalty management. While these functions are often described in highly technical terms, the company frames its core mission more simply and humanely: to make lives better, one interaction at a time. This emphasis on human-centered service delivery has positioned Alorica as a trusted partner for many of the world’s most prominent and respected brands.

As of 2025, Alorica employs more than 100,000 associates worldwide, delivering customer experience services across multiple continents. Its workforce is dedicated to providing what the company describes as “insanely great customer experiences,” reflecting a corporate culture that values performance, adaptability, and continuous improvement. Over the years, Alorica has cultivated long-term partnerships with multinational corporations in industries such as telecommunications, finance, healthcare, technology, retail, and e-commerce. These partnerships are sustained through the company’s ability to combine large-scale operations with increasingly data-driven and technology-enabled service models.

Alorica Inc. is a privately held global BPO leader, with operations strategically distributed across North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. Among these, the Philippine operations hold particular significance, given the country’s position as a global hub for customer service outsourcing. The Philippines offers a large, English-proficient workforce, strong service-oriented culture, and cost efficiencies that align closely with Alorica’s operational needs. Consequently, Alorica has become one of the major employers within the Philippine BPO sector, influencing employment patterns, skills development, and workplace practices.

Founded in 1999 by Andy Lee in Irvine, California, Alorica’s corporate identity is deeply embedded in its name. “Alorica” is a portmanteau derived from “A” (Alpha, meaning “first”) and “Lorica” (a Latin term referring to the protective armor worn by knights). Together, these elements symbolize the company’s aspiration to be “First in Service”, emphasizing protection, reliability, and leadership in customer engagement. This foundational philosophy has guided Alorica’s expansion strategy and operational ethos over more than two decades.

A defining feature of Alorica’s rise to global prominence has been its aggressive growth-through-acquisition strategy. Rather than relying solely on organic expansion, the company pursued large-scale mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to rapidly increase its market share, service capabilities, and geographic reach. In 2015, Alorica acquired West Corporation’s agent services business for approximately USD 275 million, a move that effectively doubled its workforce to around 48,000 employees and significantly expanded its client portfolio. This was followed by the landmark 2016 acquisition of Expert Global Solutions (EGS), which propelled Alorica’s annual revenues beyond USD 2 billion and dramatically strengthened its presence in key outsourcing markets, particularly in the Philippines.

By late 2025, Alorica had firmly established itself as one of the largest privately held BPO providers in the world, employing over 100,000 people globally. Its scale, combined with its evolving technological capabilities, positions the company as both a beneficiary and a driver of transformation within the BPO industry. However, this growth has also introduced complex challenges related to workforce sustainability, technological disruption, and financial management—issues that are increasingly central to scholarly and policy discussions on the future of outsourcing.

This report therefore provides a comprehensive analysis of Alorica Inc., examining its historical development, business operations, estimated financial performance, and management practices. Particular attention is given to the company’s strategic positioning in the Philippines and its response to emerging global trends such as automation, artificial intelligence, and shifting labor demands. By situating Alorica within broader industry and socio-economic contexts, the discussion aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of contemporary BPO dynamics and their implications for workers, organizations, and national economies.

 

Alorica’s Operations in the Philippines: Growth, Business Model, and Labor Dynamics

Alorica’s expansion into the Philippines must be understood within its broader global growth trajectory and the country’s emergence as a premier destination for offshore customer experience services. The company began its international expansion in 2004, marking its first offshore operations and signaling a strategic pivot toward labor-abundant, English-proficient economies. This expansion accelerated significantly through mergers and acquisitions, most notably the 2015 acquisition of TRICOM Corporation, a Philippines-based BPO firm, which provided Alorica with an established local footprint and operational expertise. The subsequent 2016 merger with Expert Global Solutions (EGS) transformed Alorica into one of the world’s largest BPO providers and dramatically expanded its Philippine workforce. Further consolidation followed with the 2018 acquisition of C3/CustomerContactChannels, reinforcing Alorica’s scale and service diversification. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Alorica demonstrated organizational resilience by rapidly transitioning to work-from-home (WFH) models, a move widely cited in industry studies as a defining survival strategy for BPO firms during the global health crisis (ILO, 2021; IBPAP, 2022). By 2022, the company had intensified investments in digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and automation, aligning with global shifts toward technology-enabled customer experience delivery.

As of the mid-2020s, Alorica maintains its operational headquarters in Irvine, California, alongside a corporate headquarters in New York City, reflecting its dual emphasis on operational efficiency and financial governance. The company employs approximately 100,000 workers globally, operates in more than 14 countries across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and services over 250 client organizations across multiple industries, including telecommunications, healthcare, financial services, retail, and technology. While Alorica has been privately held since 2021, following its acquisition by affiliates of funds managed by Mantle Ridge LP, industry analysts continue to estimate its financial scale using pre-privatization data and market benchmarks (Everest Group, 2023; Statista, 2024).

Alorica’s business model is anchored in diversified revenue streams that extend beyond traditional voice-based customer support. These include customer relationship management (CRM), technical support, back-office processing, digital transformation services, and collections and revenue cycle management. Prior to its privatization, Alorica reported estimated revenues of approximately USD 2.3 billion in 2019, with pandemic-related disruptions contributing to a temporary decline to USD 1.8–2.0 billion in 2020. Although post-2021 financial disclosures are limited, industry research suggests that Alorica’s operating margins fall within the 8–12 percent range, consistent with large-scale BPO providers (Deloitte, 2022). Notably, Philippine operations play a critical role in sustaining profitability through labor arbitrage, economies of scale, and increasingly, higher-value technical and digital service delivery.

The Philippines represents Alorica’s largest operational hub outside the United States and is widely regarded within the company as its “crown jewel” for offshore delivery. Pre-pandemic estimates placed Alorica’s Philippine workforce at over 40,000 employees, distributed across multiple delivery sites including Angeles and Pampanga, Tarlac, Iloilo, Eastwood (Quezon City), and Novaliches, among others. More recent estimates suggest that Alorica maintains 38,000 to 45,000 employees across more than 19 delivery locations nationwide, consistently ranking it among the top three largest BPO employers in the Philippines (IBPAP, 2024; PEZA, 2023). Conservative projections indicate that Philippine operations account for approximately 25–30 percent of Alorica’s global operational capacity, underscoring the country’s strategic importance to the firm’s global service architecture.

From a management perspective, Alorica Philippines has gained attention for its millennial-centric and performance-driven management style, characterized by the use of gamification, microlearning platforms, and data-driven performance tracking. Studies on BPO human resource management note that such approaches are intended to mitigate agent fatigue, enhance engagement, and improve short-term productivity in high-pressure service environments (Soriano & Cabaero, 2021). Alorica also employs a structured 90-day onboarding framework, designed to address chronic turnover issues endemic to the Philippine BPO sector. While these innovations align with best practices identified in HRM literature, their effectiveness remains uneven, particularly when evaluated against long-term job satisfaction and labor relations outcomes.

Labor relations remain one of the most contested aspects of Alorica’s Philippine operations. A defining episode was the 2018 labor dispute involving the Unified Employees of Alorica (UEA), which culminated in one of the first highly visible BPO strikes in Philippine history. The conflict centered on allegations of forced resignations during site transfers and raised broader concerns about job security, contractualization, and management transparency within the industry. Subsequent academic case studies, including those conducted by Far Eastern University’s Human Resource Management program, have identified a weak management–employee relationship as a persistent internal challenge for Alorica Philippines, despite its strong recruitment pipeline and operational scale. These findings echo broader critiques within labor studies that frame the Philippine BPO sector as a site of structural precarity, characterized by high attrition, emotional labor demands, and limited collective bargaining power (Ofreneo, 2018; Rodriguez & Schwenken, 2020).

In recent years, Alorica has repositioned its Philippine sites as Centers of Excellence for high-value, technology-enabled customer experience services. The company has reported a 150 percent year-over-year increase in digital innovation investments within its Asian hubs, supporting platforms such as ReVoLT (Real-time Voice Language Translation) and proprietary AI systems like evoAI. Internal performance metrics indicate a double-digit reduction in attrition rates and a reported 30 percent growth in the global workforce, with a substantial proportion based in the Philippines. From a financial standpoint, these trends suggest improved operational efficiency and reduced recruitment costs, which are critical determinants of profitability in labor-intensive service industries (McKinsey, 2023).

Nevertheless, Alorica’s Philippine operations face emerging structural risks. As a private, debt-financed company, Alorica is more sensitive to credit market fluctuations than publicly listed competitors such as Concentrix and Teleperformance. Moreover, while AI-driven solutions enhance competitiveness, they also raise concerns about job displacement and role cannibalization, particularly for high-volume voice accounts that have historically anchored Philippine BPO employment. Scholars warn that without systematic reskilling and labor protections, automation may erode the long-term employment advantages that initially positioned the Philippines as a global outsourcing leader (ILO, 2023; Graham & Anwar, 2024).

Contemporary Operational Position of Alorica in the Philippine BPO Landscape

By the mid-2020s, Alorica’s operations in the Philippines had reached a stage of organizational maturity characterized by scale consolidation, reputational management, and strategic repositioning rather than rapid expansion. Unlike earlier phases marked by aggressive site growth and workforce accumulation, Alorica’s Philippine strategy during this period emphasized operational stability, employer branding, and service differentiation, particularly in response to intensifying competition, rising labor costs, and regulatory scrutiny within the local BPO sector. As one of the country’s largest BPO employers, Alorica occupies a dual position: it is both a flagship outsourcing firm contributing significantly to employment generation and a highly visible actor subject to public, legal, and labor-sector accountability.

Operationally, Alorica Philippines functions as a multi-site, multi-client delivery network supporting a wide range of global accounts, including telecommunications, healthcare, financial services, and e-commerce. Its Philippine sites increasingly handle not only traditional voice-based customer service but also complex technical support, healthcare information management, and AI-assisted customer experience functions. This shift reflects a broader industry trend in which Philippine BPO firms attempt to move up the value chain amid automation pressures and declining margins in entry-level voice services. Within Alorica’s global delivery model, Philippine operations are no longer framed merely as low-cost labor centers but as strategic hubs for service quality, scale reliability, and digital experimentation.

At the same time, Alorica’s Philippine presence is deeply embedded in the country’s institutional and regulatory ecosystem, particularly through its long-standing relationship with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA). Its continued designation as a PEZA locator underscores the firm’s compliance with export oriented service requirements and its alignment with national investment priorities. However, this institutional embeddedness also exposes Alorica to heightened expectations regarding labor standards, workplace safety, and employment security areas that have become increasingly salient as BPO labor issues gain public visibility and legal attention.

From a reputational standpoint, Alorica has invested heavily in corporate culture narratives, positioning itself as a “People First” organization committed to diversity, internal mobility, and employee engagement. Such narratives are strategically important in the Philippine labor market, where BPO firms compete intensely for talent amid high attrition rates and growing worker awareness of employment rights. Employer branding mechanisms such as third-party workplace certifications, internal engagement surveys, and social media visibility have thus become integral to Alorica’s local operational strategy, functioning both as recruitment tools and as reputational buffers against criticism.

However, scholars and labor observers caution that the Philippine BPO sector, including firms like Alorica, operates within a structural tension between global service demands and local labor realities. High-performance metrics, “critical working days,” and client-driven service-level agreements often translate into intensified labor processes on the ground. As a result, formal indicators of organizational excellence may coexist with persistent challenges related to work intensity, compensation equity, occupational health, and collective representation. This contradiction is not unique to Alorica but is emblematic of the broader political economy of outsourcing in the Philippines, where global competitiveness is frequently achieved through labor flexibility and cost containment.

It is within this complex context marked by industry recognition, operational scale, regulatory engagement, and unresolved labor tensions that Alorica’s recent standing in the Philippines must be evaluated. The following discussion therefore examines recent audit results, labor relations developments, and financial-operational indicators, highlighting how Alorica’s public image and internal realities intersect in the contemporary Philippine BPO environment.

Conclusion: Labor Process, Neoliberal Governance, and the Limits of Corporate Legitimacy in the Philippine BPO Sector

This study of Alorica’s Philippine operations underscores the structural contradictions that define contemporary labor regimes in the global business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. While Alorica presents itself as a high-performing, people-centered organization evidenced by workplace certifications, internal promotion pathways, and digital innovation investments these indicators coexist with persistent labor disputes, regulatory interventions, and worker grievances. Framed through Labor Process Theory (LPT) and the lens of neoliberal governance, this contradiction reveals how organizational legitimacy is increasingly produced through symbolic and technological mechanisms rather than through substantive improvements in labor conditions.

From a labor process perspective, Alorica’s Philippine workplaces exemplify the intensification of managerial control through surveillance, performance metrics, and algorithmic management. Call monitoring systems, real-time dashboards, gamified rankings, and quality assurance scores function as contemporary instruments of labor discipline, extending managerial authority deep into the labor process itself. These mechanisms align with Foucauldian notions of disciplinary power, where control is exercised not through overt coercion but through constant visibility and self-regulation (Foucault, 1977). Within this regime, workers internalize productivity norms and behavioral expectations, effectively becoming agents of their own discipline. The result is a highly efficient yet psychologically demanding labor environment, particularly for frontline customer service agents.

Neoliberal governance further shapes this labor regime by prioritizing flexibility, competitiveness, and cost efficiency over employment security and collective rights. In the Philippine BPO sector, this is manifested through practices such as floating status, rapid redeployment, and the normalization of high attrition as an industry constant. Alorica’s reliance on strategic onboarding programs and employer branding initiatives reflects an attempt to manage labor instability without fundamentally altering the conditions that produce it. Certifications such as Great Place to Work® function as reputational technologies, reinforcing corporate legitimacy while deflecting attention from structural issues related to wages, workload intensity, and occupational health.

Recent legal and regulatory developments complicate this governance framework. The Philippine Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling in Aragones v. Alltech, which affirms that an employer–employee relationship begins upon the signing of a job offer, represents a significant challenge to long-standing BPO practices involving delayed deployment and contractual ambiguity. Similarly, labor and safety controversies such as the Alorica-MOA fire incident and subsequent calls for Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) inspections expose the limits of self-regulation in an industry heavily dependent on state incentives and regulatory leniency (BIEN, 2025; BFP, 2025).

The continued marginalization of unions within the BPO sector further illustrates the tension between neoliberal labor flexibility and democratic workplace participation. The experience of the Unified Employees of Alorica (UEA) demonstrates how collective organization disrupts individualized performance regimes by reasserting labor’s collective visibility. Although recent prosecutorial decisions affirm picketing as a protected right, management resistance to unionization remains entrenched, reflecting broader structural hostility toward collective bargaining in export-oriented service industries.

In summary, Alorica’s Philippine operations reveal how global competitiveness in the BPO sector is sustained through a labor process characterized by surveillance, emotional labor, and contractual flexibility, all embedded within a neoliberal governance framework that privileges investment security over worker protection. While corporate innovations and certifications contribute to organizational resilience, they do not resolve the enduring struggles of BPO workers for fair wages, humane working conditions, and the right to unionize. Addressing these challenges requires not only corporate reform but also stronger regulatory enforcement, meaningful social dialogue, and a reorientation of development policy toward labor-centered growth. Without such interventions, the Philippine BPO sector risks reproducing a cycle of high performance built on persistent precarity.

REFERENCES

Alorica Inc. (2025). Security & compliance: Digitally empowered defense and global compliance leadership. https://www.alorica.com/security-compliance

Alorica Inc. (2025, July 21). Alorica reports record growth in the first half of 2025 [Press release]. https://www.alorica.com/news/detail/alorica-growth-award-winning-digital-cx

Bureau of Fire Protection. (2025). Fire incident response data and official investigation reports [Government FOI data]. Freedom of Information Philippines. https://www.foi.gov.ph/agencies/bfp/

BPO Industry Employees Network. (2025, December 29). BPO employees demand DOLE, BFP inspection after Alorica blaze. Republika News. https://republikanews.org/2025/12/29/bpo-employees-demand-dole-bfp-inspection-after-alorica-blaze/

Enviliance ASIA. (2025). Philippines occupational safety and health standards: RA 11058 compliance requirements. https://enviliance.com/regions/southeast-asia/ph/ph-osh

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage Books.

GMA Integrated News. (2025, December 28). BFP: Tumaas ang fire incidents nitong December 2025 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk2rv0M2H40

Great Place to Work® Philippines. (2025). Alorica Teleservices, Inc. – Certified company profile. https://greatplacetowork.com.ph/companies/alorica-teleservices-inc/

Ong, G. (2025, December 27). Fire hits houses, shopping mall in Manila. The Philippine Star. https://www.philstar.com/nation/2025/12/27/2496903/fire-hits_houses_shopping_mall_manila

Philippine Information Agency. (2025, December 18). BFP intensifies fire preparedness for holiday safety. https://pia.gov.ph/news/bfp-intensifies-fire-preparedness-for-holiday-safety/

Reddit. (2025, December 21). Alorica MoA fire? [Online forum thread]. r/BPOinPH. https://www.reddit.com/r/BPOinPH/comments/1ps8dtz/alorica_moa_fire/

Supreme Court of the Philippines. (2025, May 16). Aragones v. Alltech: Signed job offer creates employer–employee relationship (G.R. No. 233486). https://sc.judiciary.gov.ph

 

 

Until the Finish line

December 13, 2025.

I woke up late today. 10 a.m. The sun was already high, painting my small room in Barangka with a light that felt heavier than it looked. I ate heavy meals. I know what my diabetes whispers in my veins, and the latest tests shout it back. But for a moment, I chose the simple joy of taste. Sugar sparks my mind; it fuels these big, unwieldy dreams of a better world. Sometimes, you have to feed the dreamer, even if it troubles the body.

After eating, I looked outside my window. Living here, on the side of Urban Bliss, is a constant contrast. There’s a resilient beauty in the community, in the families making a life with so little, but it’s edged with a quiet depression. This is the "minimum bare life," as I call it. How long will I stay? I don’t know. But destiny isn’t a place you wait for; it’s a path you wear in with your own footsteps. I am not always happy, but I am always trying. There’s a difference, and in that difference is where hope lives.

Living alone isn’t the fantasy they sell. But it gives you time. Time to read books that stretch your imagination across galaxies. Time to sit with my thoughts, a cigarette for company, with no one to dictate the rhythm of my solitude. There’s a power in that silence.

Then, I face the computer. My portal. Here, I write for my blog, the words a steady stream against the chaos. I let a Netflix show play in the background for company. I’ve mostly stopped scrolling social media. The political shenanigans, the lies treated as truth, the corruption that eats away at our country’s future—it’s all too much. It creates an astronomical stress that my 40-year-old heart and mind struggle to orbit daily. Sometimes, I dream of a simpler comfort, like a hug from a hunk like Matt Damon, to momentarily shield me from the storm. But comfort alone doesn’t change things.

My mind is a busy place. A torrent of ideas, fears, and questions with no one to talk to. Is this still okay? To feel this overwhelmed? The answer, I suppose, is that the planet keeps revolving on its path. The sun rises in Barangka, and in Malacañang, and in cities far away. Life insists on going on. And so must we.

So today, I choose to read. To research. To fill my mind with articles, books, reviews literature that aligns with my soul’s intent. I am a sociologist, a social science teacher. Research is my passion; it’s the raw ingredient for being a catalyst. A former professor in Community Organizing once told me, "Changing the world is impossible alone. But changing your community is a revolution waiting to start." He was right. The utopian dream isn’t a single grand event; it’s a mosaic. It’s built by countless hands choosing, every day, to add one small piece of kindness, of understanding, of collective work. Improving yourself and helping the person next to you is the foundation of changing the world.

That’s why I write. It’s my tool, my therapy, my rebellion. In a world that often tells a 40 year old gay man to be quiet, writing says, "I am here. I feel. I matter." It makes the invisible, visible.

My dream of finishing graduate school sometimes feels galaxies away. The path is long, and the resources are thin. But impossibility is just a word used by those who have stopped walking. As long as I hold the desire to learn, to contribute, to add my piece to the mosaic, I am already on the path. The finish line isn’t just a degree; it’s the person I become on the journey there.

So here I am. In Barangka. Dreaming my utopian dreams, one word, one thought, one day at a time. And perhaps, that’s where the real change begins—not in a dramatic leap, but in the quiet, persistent courage to dream forward, together.

Yes. I am a diva.

The Commuting life and the Hell.

    Ever since humans invented the wheel, transportation has been about connection—bringing people together, moving goods, and bridging cultures. Progress, in many ways, rides on the back of reliable transit. But here in the Philippines, our legendary resilience is being stretched to its breaking point, not by a sudden crisis, but by a daily grind that turns a simple commute into a battle for sanity.

    We Filipinos are masters of diskarte. When life gives us lemons, we don’t just make lemonade; we figure out how to sell it. But that ingenuity shouldn’t be a permanent requirement just to get to work on time. Our ability to adapt is being exploited, masking a broken system that desperately needs genuine change, not just more patient commuters.

    My own breaking point came last November. As a night-shift warrior in the BPO industry—the lifeblood of our economy that employs over 1.5 million Filipinos—I decided to take on the mythical "day shift." Anyone in a BPO knows: attendance is sacred. Tardiness isn’t just frowned upon; it’s a metric that stares back at you from performance reviews, leading to NTEs (Notice to Explain), suspensions, or worse. My mission was simple: be infallible.

    I gave myself a huge buffer. My plan was foolproof: leave Marikina early, ride a modern jeepney to Cubao Gateway, glide through the mall’s air-conditioned underpass (a genius shortcut for mall-walkers and commuters alike), and be at the MRT station by 6:30 AM for a breezy ride to work by 7:00 AM.

    But as I emerged from Gateway’s cool confines, the scene on the street was pure chaos. A sea of people stood glued to their phones, faces lit by the glow of ride-hailing apps. My heart sank. This wasn’t the usual morning rush; this was the stillness of a system in cardiac arrest. I pushed forward, only to see the dreaded sign: “MRT-3: DERAILLED. NO SERVICE FROM CUBAO TO SHAW.”

    Seriously?! Panic set in, not just for me, but for hundreds of us—workers whose livelihoods depend on being on time. The script had flipped. Our carefully calculated diskarte was useless.

    What followed was a two-hour odyssey of pure stress. We became a river of people, marching towards the EDSA Carousel station near P. Tuazon. The line was a testament to collective desperation. The humid air, heavy with sweat and frustration, made the cramped flyover feel like a sauna. People shouted. Some cursed. All while clutching bags, dignity slowly evaporating.

We fall in line in the other side of overpass in Edsa, Central Avenue

The crowded and not so systemic line of passengers coming from Cubao MRT Station hoping to get into work by 8am

    I arrived at work late for the first time. My perfect record, shattered. Not by my own lack of effort, but by a transportation system that feels like it’s actively working against us.

    This wasn’t just a bad day; it was a symptom. Commuting in Metro Manila is a daily battle. Not with swords or guns, but a war of attrition against your own patience, within an ecosystem of dysfunction. Studies, like those from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), estimate that Metro Manila’s traffic congestion costs the Philippine economy a staggering ₱3.5 billion per day in lost productivity. Meanwhile, the World Bank has highlighted that our public transport system remains fragmented and fails to meet the growing demand of the megacity.

    The unreliability isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a clear signal of a deep, systemic failure that scholars call a "policy gridlock." As political scientist John T. Sidel of the London School of Economics argues in his analysis, Averting “Carmageddon” Through Reform?, the traffic crisis is a result of an entire ecosystem of problems—fragmented agencies, conflicting political interests, and short-term fixes—that create a paralyzing gridlock preventing real, lasting solutions from taking root.

    The news is full of proposals and promises, but the experience on the ground is one of ambiguity and ambivalence. As journalist and urban planner Felix R. Roxas often critiques, there is a glaring gap between planning and execution in our transport governance.

    This issue of traffic and poor transit is more than just a daily headache; it’s a political and systemic mirror reflecting who we prioritize as a society. The real battle isn’t about how much more frustration people can absorb. The question is: when will our leaders truly see us—the sweaty, tired, resilient commuters—and break the gridlock to prove, through clear and consistent action, that they are here to serve the people, not just endure them?

I survived that commute from hell. But until the system changes, millions of us will be fighting the same battle tomorrow.

References

IBPAP. (2023). Philippine IT-BPM industry statistics. IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines. https://www.ibpap.org/

Japan International Cooperation Agency. (2014). Roadmap for transport infrastructure development for Metro Manila and its surrounding areas. https://www.jica.go.jp/english/our_work/thematic_issues/urban/pdf/mm_roadmap_en.pdf

Roxas, F. R. (2023, June 15). The gap between planning and commuting hell. Philippine Daily Inquirer. https://opinion.inquirer.net/162567/the-gap-between-planning-and-commuting-hell

Sidel, J. T. (2019). Averting “Carmageddon” through reform? An eco-systemic analysis of traffic congestion and transportation policy gridlock in Metro Manila. London School of Economics. (Unpublished manuscript).

World Bank. (2017). Philippines urbanization review: Fostering competitive, sustainable and inclusive cities. World Bank Group. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/philippines/publication/philippines-urbanization-review-fostering-competitive-sustainable-and-inclusive-cities