Tonyo Cruz
By Tonyo Cruz
Something great happened this week: The Nagkaisa broad labor coalition led by the conservative ALU-TUCP and the militant trade union center KMU came together to announce they would rally and march together this Labor Day 2018.
Who would have thought that we would see this happening, when ALU-TUCP and KMU are like “langis at tubig” regarding many labor and political issues?
Credit goes to President Duterte for uniting the disunited Philippine labor movement. His refusal or inability to deliver his campaign promise of ending “Endo” and his trashing of a labor-drafted executive order proclaiming regularization as the norm in employment, have united Nagkaisa and KMU in a common cause.
And so on May 1, we will workers of the Philippines united in a common cause. Expect Nagkaisa and KMU to convene the Parliament of the Streets where labor leaders will take turns raising awareness and the fighting will of workers on a broad range of issues besetting them.
Economists at Ibon Foundation report that the real value of today’s minimum wage levels have plunged alongside rising prices of basic goods, new and higher taxes under TRAIN, and pro-oligarch economic policies that remain fundamentally unchanged under Duterte.
Workers see Duterte giving the elites perks and privileges, while not giving economic relief to workers. Labor has gone tired of hearing news about economic growth that does not raise wages, deprives job security, and worsens people’s standards of living.
Nagkaisa and KMU will raise the specter of mass unemployment in Boracay as well as the impact to the poorest Aklanons of the island’s closure on Duterte’s orders. They surely do not look with favor on the deployment of soldiers and police in Boracay, a move that is less about law enforcement and more about preventing Aklanons from exercising their rights vis-a-vis Duterte’s closure order.
Nagkaisa and KMU will jointly denounce the acts of the Duterte regime that endanger the employment and rights of 250,000 OFWs in Kuwait. They will surely point out that there is no reverse-diaspora happening since 2016. OFWs know that no fundamental change has come or is coming. The regime is as dependent on dollar remittances as past regimes were. The rosy employment statistics fail to include the 15M OFWs who ought to be counted as among the unemployed locally and were forced by circumstance to find employment outside of the country.
In the Parliament of the Streets to be convened by workers, labor will be exposing for the entire nation and the world to see that the Duterte regime that has a short list of reforms beneficial to the public, especially to workers. To those who claim authoritarianism is good, the workers will be out on May 1 to shout back at them: “authoritarianism for whom?”
The court jesters at the Palace say the workers should instead go to Congress to seek a stop to Endo. But isn’t that Duterte’s fiefdom right now, ruled by a supermajority? The courts have decided on several contractualization cases in favor of workers, but management disobeys the decisions.
Nagkaisa, whose initiator used to celebrate Labor Day with the sitting president as guest of honor, will not be at the palace or some solemn affair listening to the labor secretary’s obfuscation. Nagkaisa will be with KMU, taking the battle for social justice and economic relief to the streets.
It is important to note that labor was the first sector to openly defy Marcos when La Tondeña workers struck and thereby inspired many others. Supporting them were the religious and the clergy. Could the May 1 rally this year signal the beginning of the end for a Marcosian copycat?
The Nagkaisa-KMU joint statement say all roads lead to Mendiola on May 1 and many people are expected to join them. Duterte and his minions shouldn’t wonder why they are the target of this spectacular display of labor unity.