As of today—less than a month before this year’s observance of Labor Day—our laborers and their leaders aren’t telegraphing any of their demands unlike in previous years.
Are they planning something big in their march from Liwasang Bonifacio to Chino Roces Bridge which they still prefer calling Mendiola Bridge? Why are they so quiet?
In fact, the workers have at least a dozen basic issues and demands that are worth fighting for at this moment—low wages and pensions despite high costs of food, water, medicine, electricity and transportation fare. They have unmet housing needs for the urban poor, unreliable and dangerous mass transportation systems, petty crimes and lawlessness, and graft and corruption in government.
Hardship and poverty have become an unavoidable fate for workers whether they are employed, underemployed or unemployed.
Perhaps, the recent bloody and violent dispersal of protesting farmers at Kidapawan City —which is now considered a massacre—has distracted them.
About 5,000 hungry farmers who have been victims of the drought or El Niño phenomenon in North Cotabato were only asking for the release of rice to tide them over. Anyway, the provincial government had earlier allocated funds for them as part of its disaster relief preparations.
The Kidapawan massacre must have reminded our workers of the Haymarket massacre that took place 130 years ago on May 4, 1886 in Chicago, Illinois. It was also a bloody dispersal of thousands of workers who started their strike and protest march days before on May 1.
May 1 would eventually be commemorated as International Workers’ Day.
Are our labor leaders busy preparing for the May 9 election?
Maybe, but among the major labor unions, only the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines is fielding its own party-list candidates. The Federation of Free Workers and the Kilusang Mayo Uno continue not to field any candidate as in previous elections.
But the drivers, teachers, nurses and other worker groups have formed their own party-lists and are now busy campaigning.
They have, in fact, succeeded to get elected in the past, mostly by getting support from mainstream political parties that bankrolled part of their campaign expenditures.
From being full-time labor leaders, they have metamorphosed into full-blooded politicians via the party-list system. They justify their presence in Congress as being necessary to introduce pro-labor proposals. They have indeed filed such bills but they have not moved at all because those representing the interests of big businesses have either openly opposed their bills or have not supported them.
The more pragmatic labor leaders have simply hitched alongside politicians who still practice the spoils or patronage system. Despite their lack of credentials and merit, they have succeeded in getting appointed to the boards of government corporations because they supported the candidacy of the sitting president.
Dare any senior labor leader to deny that he has never been given a government post or that none of his trips abroad to attend labor conferences in Geneva, Switzerland was funded by Malacañang.
No one would accept this challenge except the dyed-in-the-wool labor leaders of the KMU.
Undeniably, many of us prefer to be mere fence-sitters while our placard-bearing workers march the streets and shout noisy and provocative demands. But at the end, we benefit more than they do.
On May 1, we would see and hear them once again do their traditional marching and protesting, but most of them have likely been egged and funded by opposition parties to denounce the incompetence and apathy of PNoy’s officials and his anointed candidates.
On that day, they would shout slogans denouncing his failure to implement certain labor standards that could have corrected the exploitative labor practices of the country’s big businesses.
Foremost of these is the abolition of contractualization law that allows companies to hire employees on a 6-month contractual basis. Ironically, it was a prominent labor leader who authored it in 1989—the late Senator Ernesto Herrera.
Twenty-seven years after, its abolition is being supported by the leading presidential candidates.
Vice President Jejomar Binay vowed to stamp-out contractualization.
Senator Grace Poe, on the other hand, declared that: “It contributes to poverty, is unfair and unjust” and “helping workers to have more long-term careers should bolster productivity.”
Mayor Digong Duterte asserted that: “How can they sustain the needs of their family, fend for their children if you employ them for 3 months only? They do not have security which results in unrest and instability back home.”
All three presidential candidates have also committed to pursue the P2,000- pension increase of the Social Security System that Rep. Neri Colmenares had proposed and which Congress had approved but PNoy vetoed.
The senator would enact a measure to implement it within the first 100 days of her administration.
The vice president criticized PNoy for vetoing the proposal, and promised to prioritize its approval because retirees “should be allowed to enjoy their due.”
The mayor was more emphatic, declaring that he would allow the pension increase but simultaneously raise funds for SSS. For him, “if there’s a will, there’s a way.”
PNoy’s anointed candidate has no choice, of course, but to toe the line of his Daang Matuwid mentor: oppose pension increase and tolerate contractualization.
May 1 would be an excellent occasion for us to know their stand on wages and other labor issues. We then would be able to assess if they are aligned or not with the International Labor Organization’s comprehensive objectives to “promote rights at work, encourage decent employment opportunities, enhance social protection, and strengthen dialogue on work-related issues.”
Hearing them on that day would be a welcome alternative to the usual messages of protests of our labor leaders.
