Fighting for jobs and justice
Recently, Malacanang cabinet
Secretary Ricardo Saludo made the assertion that the Macapagal-Arroyo
government’s programs will lift three million more Filipinos from poverty by
2010. He claimed that some 5.5 millions have already been ‘saved’ since Arroyo
came to power in 2001.
“The economy’s resurgence is Mindanao to 53 percent (from 61 percent).” points for regional data.
having impact not only on the peso and the stock market, but more important, on
the poor. Last week’s Social Weather Stations survey showed a significant drop
in self-rated poverty (SRP) to 51 percent in September 2006, from 59 percent in
June. SRP in Metro Manila fell to 46 percent (from 54 percent), in the rest of
Luzon to 45 percent (from 59 percent), and in
“Notably too, average SRP under President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is 57.3 percent, better than under Presidents Aquino
(63.4 percent), Ramos (62.2 percent) and Estrada (59.6 percent). “
Saludo added that compared to other
administrations, the Arroyo administration has registered the highest annual
average Gross Domestic Product, the lowest inflation rate and the highest rate
of employment and job creation.
"The
Philippines has returned to the
robust growth rates of the 1960s last seen during the first (Diosdado)
Macapagal administration," he said.
The Macapagal-Arroyo administration has
succeeded in making data manipulation and the twisting of economic indicators
and standards into a fine art. Almost only a monthly basis, its economic data
and indicator-gathering agencies change their base levels for measuring
poverty, employment, hunger and costs of living. Hence, the executive is always
prepared with facts and statistics that defy reality while at the same time
promote the administration’s supposed success at battling poverty.
For all of Malacanang’s attempts to mask its
failure to alleviate poverty, however, the truth still comes out. According to
the Department of Labor and Employment’s Current Labor Statistics (July 2006),
from a 7.4% unemployment rate in October 2005, unemployment increased to 8.2%
in April 2006, meaning more than 300,000 lost their jobs. Unemployment in the
NCR also increased by 14% this April.
These percentages do not even reflect the true
number of Filipinos who don’t have jobs. The government always makes new
computations to define employment and unemployment. It doesn’t even include
among the unemployed those who don’t have jobs but are still searching for
employment. Beginning April 2005, through the NSCB Resolution No.15, the
government added availability criterion as one of the factors in the
computation for unemployment. Because of this, one million Filipinos were
automatically removed from the ranks of the unemployed, despite the truth that
at the time of the surveys, they did not have jobs.
While the country’s labor force has reached 33
million, 16 million or almost 50% of them do not belong to the formal labor
market. More than 12 million are actually own-account workers, and more than 4
million are unpaid family workers. It’s also alarming how the number of
part-time workers has increased by 17% in the last year. Part-time workers are
those who have less than 40 paid work hours a week. (+1.962M to total 13.489M
in April 2006). On the other hand, the number of full-time workers fell by 6.6%
or 1.332 million. This 20.078 M in April 2005 to 28.746 M in April 2006.
But let’s not just fight economic data with
economic data. Employment indicators alone are not enough to create a full
image of how the economic situation is in the Philippines. Let’s consider this simple fact:the
worsening situation of human and civil rights in the country is also a serious
and valid indicator of how backward the country is economically and
politically. There is still a strong protest movement that continues to expose
the worsening poverty in the country and the government lack of genuine
response to alleviate it. There is widespread discontent, the surveys all
reflect this and this discontent and anger is directed against the government’s
failure to enact measures that will give relief to the problems of poverty,
joblessness and hunger.
In response, meanwhile, the government has launched a
full-scale war against its legitimate critics and terrorize those who choose to
speak out and denounce the government’s attacks against the well-being of
Filipinos. Among the targets and casualties in this war are workers – one of
the sectors that the Macapagal-Arroyo administration claims to be helping the
most.
Because of this, workers should not hesitate to move to the forefront of the
campaign against political repression even as they fight for higher wages, jobs
and job security.
It is no secret that Philippine laws and institutions of authority governing labor and
workers’ rights do not represent the
interests the Filipino working people. As with many governments around the world that uphold globalization, the
Philippine government under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo does not consider workers’
rights and welfare an immediate concern. In fact, to the Arroyo government,
workers’ rights – their wages, job
security, benefits and union and human rights – are very expendable. They’re
among the first to go and be violated in the course of employers and
capitalists’ relentless drive for increasing profits, but the government and its agencies do very little to prosecute
and punish capitalists for these
violations.
As documented by institutions such as the Center for Trade
Union and Human Rights (CTUHR), PRO-LABOR, The Ecumenical Institute for Labor
Education and Research (EILER) and the University of the Philippines’ School of
Labor relations, the most obvious manifestations of the rise in repression of
workers rights is not only the increasing violence in picketlines or even the
murder of labor leaders and unionists, but the increase in violations against
what should be standard labor rights — - the right to organize, to strike or bargain collectively. The
widespread restrictions on the right to strike, both in the public and private
sectors, push workers outside the law when taking collective action to defend
their interests. The resulting repression is increasingly brutal and, in some instances,
deadly such as in the case of the Hacienda Luisita Massacre.
It should also be mentioned , because of the poor and low
observance of even the most basic occupational health and safety standards,
hundreds of workers meet accidents at work, or they themselves become
susceptible to diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia which in other more
advanced countries have been totally eradicated. During the course of this
two-day conference, it will be revealed just exactly how many suffer because of
violations of OHS and why OHS observance is low. The same way that it will be revealed how
many each year lose their jobs merely
for attempting to form a union, hold certificate elections, and put together a
collective bargaining agreements.
Is fighting for our jobs and our rights as workers removed
from opposing worsening political repression?
Of course not.
Especially since the Macapagal-Arroyo government declared
workers who assert their rights as terrorists and economic saboteurs, workers
and active union members have become
definite targets of state repression. Hundreds of thousands in taxpayers money
go towards strengthening regional deployment of police and even military forces
to protect export processing zones where the factories of transnational and
multinational corporations are established. Rallies, demonstrations, and other
forms of collective, democratic expression which workers engage in are
virtually banned and criminalized.
Violence against workers mainly stems from institutional opposition to the exercise
of labor rights. Union activity in the Philippines is considered by the government and
capitalists to be ‘subversive activity’
because it challenges corporate profits. Particularly targeted are local and
national trade union leaders; but a trend has been seen emerging: almost
automatically targeted are those unionists and labor leaders who denounce human
rights abuses and active in human rights campaigns. Many times, the harassment
and even murder of leaders and rank-and-file unionists coincide not only with
labor negotiations, but during campaigns exposing human rights violations and
political repression.
By all accounts, the Macapagal-Arroyo government has a
gruesome human rights record when it comes to labor. Mercenary forces strongly alleged to be in
cahoots with the military are sent out
in a murderous campaign against trade unionists and political activists. According to reports from local and international
labor advocates, the vast majority of
trade union rights violations including murders are the committed by either the
governments themselves and its armed forces such as the army and police, or its indirect agents.
Independent investigations by cause-oriented groups in their
reports submitted to the Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International,
the International Labor Organization and
the United Nations all agree that the Armed Forces of the
Philippines cannot be let off the hook and their possible involvement in some of the
killings of activists including unionists and labor leaders cannot be
dismissed. By holding the AFP
accountable, the national government is also then held responsible.
Most of the people who fall victim to the atrocities of
the military and with the blessing of the government are ordinary men and women trying to do
extraordinary things. The expression of their deeply held convictions,
political ideology or commitment to union ideals and ideals of social justice
and genuine democracy are what makes them
prime targets of government repression. As a result the government through indirect and insidious means ban
unions and associations, and instigate campaigns of harassment, political
killings and ‘disappearances’, arbitrary detention, torture, and murder of
political activists, including activist workers and unionists.
But why does this consistently worsening state of labor
remain, as it’s called by media practitioners, back-burner news?
Workers should always be conscious that the government
utilizing the media continues to paint a
distorted picture of the neo-liberal policies of globalization which are
imposed on the Philippines through the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), World Bank and the World Trade Organization. They all but ignore the
widespread opposition of the progressive workers and their unions, as well as
the rest of the progressive forces in Philippine society. Even now, as the
Philippine government plays hosts to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), negligible coverage will be given to the valid issues that impact on
labor because of trade and economic policies and agreements being peddled by
the ASEAN and implemented by its member countries.
It is then imperative that organized and politicized workers and their unions reach out to the
greatest number of unorganized workers. They should expose the truth that globalization and its
local implementation by the Arroyo administration is geared towards imposing
the destructive and inhumane global hegemony of the transnational corporations
and businesses. Workers and their unions
must exhaust all means and venues to educate and encourage the rest of the working people to stand
against neo-liberal globalization and
its economic and social consequences which exacerbate the already critical
state of employment and poverty in the
Philippines and the rest of the world.
That is why it has become an urgent task for the trade
unions to educate public opinion on the real issues, further develop their
information networks and unite with other democratic forces to build up such
networks to expose and denounce the anti-social orientation of these economic
and social policies that are being imposed through the IMF, World Bank and the
WTO and implemented by anti-labor, anti-people governments like that of
Macapagal-Arroyo and its institutions.
We must constantly remember that united struggle is always
primary and essential because the exploiters and oppressors intensify their
efforts to divide and rule, in order to impose their hegemony, with no regard
for international law and the basic rights and interests of the working people.
At a time when the biggest financial resources are urgently necessary for education, public health, housing and
other social necessities, it is absolutely unacceptable, unconscionable that the scarce resources are wasted on
foreign debt servicing, graft and corruption, military modernization and the
propaganda machinery of the administration. All these further destabilize social security; and attacks on social
security endanger the over-all
state of the country and the welfare of
the Filipino people.
Unions and workers should be at the forefront of the struggle for human
rights. After all, throughout the history of the progressive and militant trade
union movement in the Philippines,
many have lost their lives and risked their liberty in their attempts to claim
basic human rights such as freedom of association, the right to organize and
engage in collective bargaining, and the right to free speech. These rights
form the basis of trade union rights all over the world, and this is something
that Filipino workers should always keep in mind. As workers fight for their jobs, their
benefits and their rights to unionize and collectively bargain, they fight for
their very right to live, with decency and with hope. Workers rights are human
rights.
For workers to join
unions and to strengthen their unity is to begin the process of liberating
themselves from poverty and social
exclusion. Unions serve as their
members’ representative voices as
workers defend and assert their rights and campaign to improve their living and
working conditions. Tracing the history of militant unionism in the Philippines, as
in other countries, the formation of
unions was a reaction against the mechanisms of pauperization, namely low pay, long working hours, child labor and
generally appalling working conditions.
Militant unionism has
always been about eradicating poverty. The activities of progressive and
militant labor centers and its allied institutions including This Jobs and
Justice conference affirm this historical, as well as the very present and urgent role of trade unions,
to continue the fight against poverty and to promote social justice not only in
the Philippines but in the world.
Unions now more than
ever are an effective tool for workers
to escape poverty, exploitation and the violation of their basic human dignity.
Unionism means organizing collective
bargaining and other forms of negotiations and creative social dialogue and engagement.
There is the ever pressing need to organizing effective trade union
participation in the design and implementation of public policy based on the
priorities of the militant trade union movement and the needs of Filipino workers in general.
Lastly, unionism – militant and genuine unionism- means engaging in the struggle for democratic
governance and over-all respect for human and civil rights which include the
provision of decent employment and
quality public services, with full access for the unemployed, underemployed,
and working poor. All this in close unity with other progressive sectors in
society, the farmers, enlightened professionals and clergy youth and students and urban and rural poor.
Kim Scipes, a long-time global activist and
sociology teacher in the US, has this to say on the need for unions in the fight for rights:
“….When unions work together, especially as they pull in
allies, they have the ability to transcend the power of an individual
corporation and affect entire industries and, at times, even government
policies. It is this power that gives unions an ability to ensure labor rights,
gain higher wages, better working conditions, increased benefits, and the
like. And it is this power that gives
them an ability to protect their activists as well as the members who follow these activists. Without this power, wages, etc. can only
improve with management acquiescence — and protection for activists is
basically non-existent.”
Workers must unite to
defend their rights , labor, civil and human. Workers must work with other
sectors of society in defense of collective needs, goals and aspirations. As we
fight for our jobs, we must also fight for justice.#
