Posts tagged with workers

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May 15, 2010

Labor Day in Manila 2010

Thousands of workers marched on the streets of Manila together with hundreds from other sectors of society to commemorate Labor Day

More than two weeks ago, I marched in my third Labor Day rally in Manila, together with thousands from different sectors of society, to commemorate international workers’ day. Being the last Labor Day celebration under the Gloria Arroyo government, the theme of the mobilization was centered on ensuring her departure from the Malacanang, her nine-year regime having been characterized by record high unemployment, depressed wages and grave abuses of workers’ rights, and on ensuring the people’s commitment to prosecute her for her administration’s sins and failures. Being a few days before the national elections, the celebration was also an opportune time for various sectors to demand from all the candidates a pro-people and nationalist labor platform, a discussion of which has been all but silenced with all the shallow and petty mudslinging that characterized the three-month campaign period.

Reps. Liza Maza & Satur Ocampo marching with leaders of workers' unions and other sectors

Rainier Sindayen, Chairperson of the University of the Philippines Diliman student council, leads the chants as the thousands marched through Quezon Boulevard onto Liwasang Bonifacio

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May 14, 2009

Labor Day in Manila ’09 (Part 4)

My friends in UP and colleagues from Kabataan Party were at the Labor Day rally to affirm the workers’ sector’s causes and to push for the youth sector’s own issues intricately connected with the workers’ struggles. I’ll post some news releases below.

8 out of 10 unemployed Filipinos are youth
New grads could end up idle for months, years

Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino on Labor Day warned that majority of this year’s 900,000 new college graduates could end up idle months or even years after graduation. “The youth are always at the greatest risk in these economic downturns. Often it is young workers or new graduates who are the hardest hit,” Palatino said.

“For every 10 unemployed Filipinos, five fall under the age group of 15 to 24 years,” Palatino said, citing the January 2009 Labor Force Survey. This accounts for 49.2 percent of the total number of unemployed Filipinos. If combined with the 25 to 34 age group, Palatino said the share of young Filipinos in the unemployed accounts for 80 percent of the total number of unemployed Filipinos.

“Young, low-skilled workers are easily priced out of entry-level jobs. Young workers are also often disadvantaged in bargaining arrangements,” he added. “The government is trying to hide the high unemployment and underemployment rates in the country by using the call center boom and its new medical tourism program.”

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May 12, 2009

Labor Day in Manila ’09 (Part 3)

After taking some shots of the march at Quiapo, I tried to run ahead of the demonstrators to the other end of Quezon Bridge to be able to take shots of the different contingents that made up the march, from the labor and other militant leaders in front to those from the youth sector at the back. There were contingents from migrant workers, government employees, health workers, teachers, farmers, fishermen, jeepney drivers, among others.

Upon reaching Liwasang Bonifacio, the annual Labor Day program commenced. Agitating and passionate speeches from leaders of Kilusang Mayo Uno and Anakpawis were delivered. Calls reiterating the workers’ demand for the P125 across-the-board wage increase resounded in the plaza. Solidarity messages from other sectors of society, including the youth, were also delivered. There were also cultural presentations and song numbers from cultural workers’ groups.

Towards the latter part of the program, labor leaders from other countries also spoke and delivered their messages of solidarity. It was quite uplifting, and pretty amusing too when the labor delegate from Mexico chanted the quintessential el pueblo unido jamas sera vencido! (the people united will never be defeated!) with the rest of the crowd following suit. For a while it felt like we were in a large workers’ rally in Latin America.

The atmosphere wasn’t just agitating, it was also, in a way, festive and celebratory–different sectors of society coming together to reaffirm the role of workers and their collective strength.

On a very shallow level, it was also quite fun trying out all the street food that dozens of ambulant vendors were selling at Liwasang Bonifacio, while re-acquainting yourself with colleagues from different youth organizations and taking photos.

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May 11, 2009

Labor Day in Manila ’09 (Part 2)

Labor Day or Mayo Uno was also a day when Filipino workers’ organizations and unions, together with allied organizations, reiterated and reaffirmed the call for the approval of the P125 across-the-board wage increase which the government has slept on for the past decade, despite the fact that even if it was approved today, it would already be short of the average cost of living.

The government and big business line, of course, is to equate wage hikes with job cuts and to ultimately pit jobs and wages against each other, where the contradiction is not supposed to exist.

Contrary to claims of government officials in cahoots with big businesses, a P125 wage increase is doable. Just look at the profit margins of any big business in the country. An IBON Foundation study, for one, claims that “the increasing labor productivity of local workers, or the ratio of national output to employment, has been steadily increasing over the past decade.” It added that “between 1999 and 2006, labor productivity has increased by 56.3% in nominal terms and 13.1% in real terms (taking inflation into account). This shows that employers could afford to grant the P125 wage hike, which would necessarily trim their profit margin but will certainly not push them to bankruptcy.”

The unwillingness of government and big businesses to pay their workers decent wages, is simply a manifestation of, aside form the excessive greed of CEO’s and capitalist junkies, the inherent unjust character of the current capitalist order.

From Quiapo, the demonstrators proceeded across Quezon Bridge onto Liwasang Bonifacio, where the annual Labor Day program, led by KMU (Kilusang Mayo Uno) and Anakpawis, is held.

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May 9, 2009

Labor Day in Manila ’09 (Part 1)

Last May 1 was International Workers’ Day, a day when workers around the world and allied sectors of society demonstrate their collective strength and their collective call for better wages and better working and living conditions.

Here in the Philippines, storms of protest all over the nation marked Labor Day as calls to stop the retrenchment and wage cuts resounded in the streets. In Manila, tens of thousands converged along Espana and marched to Liwasang Bonifacio.

It was my second Labor Day rally. My first one was back in 2007. My friends from UP, colleagues from Kabataan Party and I started our Labor Day participation with a protest action at Philcoa at noon, together with residents of communities around UP and jeepney drivers in campus.

Past noon, we took jeepneys to the rally’s assembly point along Espana, near the University of Sto. Tomas. For an hour or so, people from various groups and sectors converged until our numbers swelled to the thousands.

I was carrying a flag of Kabataan Party from Espana till past the Quezon Boulevard Underpass when a colleague of mine took my flag so that I could take photos of the march to Liwasang Bonifacio. I raced up to one of the pedestrian overpasses in Quiapo and took shots of the long march. Indeed, the entire stretch of Quezon Boulevard from the underpass to the bridge was filled with demonstrators. Images like these one don’t usually get to see in traditional media.

[with news reports from arkibongbayan.org]

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October 15, 2008

Sipag at Tiyaga ++

[This is my simple contribution to Blog Action Day 2008.]

The most prevalent idea being perpetuated by mass media and other traditional establishments with regards to how poverty could be solved is the notion that it’s all up to the individual’s hard work and perseverance. Nasa sipag at tiyaga lang ‘yan. Kayod lang nang kayod. Mag-trabaho lang nang mag-trabaho. Dadating din ang asenso.

To reinforce this idea, it’s not seldom that we are made witnesses to countless life stories of individuals who rose from poverty rags-to-riches style. Just this weekend, over ABS-CBN, we are made audience to TV biographies of the country’s business tycoons and how they achieved their status through “hard work” and how they return to the poor their riches through humanitarian efforts and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) projects.

This, however, is the reality: anumang sipag at tiyaga ang gawin ng malawak na sektor ng manggagawa, karamihan sa kanila ay hindi talaga aasenso. Not in a prevailing order that thrives on the cycle of inequality that it perpetuates. The success stories we are being made to witness and admire are mere exceptions rather than the norm. Surely, if it’s all up to sipag at tiyaga, then most of our employees, workers and farmers, whom we pride to be hard-working, should be experiencing economic security. Don’t you ever wonder why such is not the case? After all, who benefits the most from the hard work of workers? We are simply being made to pin our hopes and be content with the way things are done and not strive or fight for something better.

Indeed, when it is not coupled with genuine reforms and changes in the core orientation of our economies and in how our governments are run, mere sipag at tiyaga will never be enough to lift the vast majority Filipinos, and even the rest of the world’s poor, out of poverty.

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September 23, 2008

On the Kowloon Restaurant Workers’ Strike

Kowloon Restaurant’s greasy pancit canton is a actually a favorite of mine but I would now have to hold back to help compel the restaurant’s owners to make amends for the exploitation of their workers.

[Re-posted from Anton Dulce's Multiply site]

Before June of this year, the Kowloon management refused to pay the minimum wage which was mandated by law. In fact, it did not follow the three most-recent wage hikes, amounting to 82 pesos. As a result, while other workers were already receiving at least P382 a day, the workers of Kowloon only got home P300.

To pressure management into giving them something which the law already mandated as theirs yet which management refused to give, the workers wore black ribbons at work in a single day last June. But instead of listening to the workers, management instead reprimanded them, especially the union leaders.

Afterwards, they decided to hold a “picket protest” after their work hours and away from any locations that would result in disruptions in operations. Afterwards, management decided to hold negotiations with the union. But secretly, they filed a case of “illegal strike” against the workers at the NLRC (National Labor Relations Commission). So when management did agree to raise their wages to P377 a day, the workers only enjoyed this wage hike for one pay day. Why? Because the other Saturday, all 73 members of the union were fired.

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