Workers, fulfill your historic role!

Labor Day in the Philippines has not lost its significance what with this year coinciding with yet another national elections. Workers are assured that at least for this day, candidates seeking the people’s mandate will talk about workers’ issues. We hope they finally do so, after resorting to mudslinging and concentrating on personal attacks against each other. Public and televised debates, where we can pick their minds, are being snubbed by almost all of the candidates. It would boil down to which aspirant would pose as labor-friendly. It would be difficult to choose as their track records, or lack thereof, on workers’ issues seem wanting.

Figures from the Department of Labor and Employment show that more than a million jobs have been created annually over the last three years, though we could not ascertain if these are all decent work. And yet, the unemployment rate still hit 11 per cent during the last quarter. That’s 3.9 million Filipinos without jobs.

Underemployment also grew to 17.5 per cent, compared to 16.1 per cent last year. With around 300,000 new entrants to the labor force following the end of the school year, the future does not look too promising.

This is aggravated by the continuous contractualization of labor, robbing workers of secured employment. According to the FFW’s own research, an average of 16 per cent of the total workforce per company is composed of manpower agency-hired employees, making them ineligible for regularization and weakening their right to organize and form unions.

On top of these, agencies that provide social protection for workers and their families are cash-strapped and need a makeover. Occupational safety and health programs at the work place are not that popular, making it more difficult for workers to enjoy decent work.

Investors are still wary over what they perceive as inconsistent policies, their confidence swayed by a feeling of economic uncertainty and political instability. Making things worse is Transparency International’s inclusion of our former leaders in its most corrupt list and the travel ban imposed by some countries against the Philippines because of constant threats of terrorism, which has affected tourism and jobs of workers in the service sector. These deprive the unemployed of probable jobs.

Unbridled globalization and excessive liberalization may be making jobs more scarce, wages lower, working conditions worse and secured work almost a thing of the past, but we shall stand firm despite the odds.

As a union, we shall help ourselves and promote solidarity with marginalized groups, who are our allies in the trade union-social movement. What we have done so far may not be grandiose but helping retrenched workers find work again, providing our members with skills training to improve their craft or develop new ones and helping budding unionist-entrepreneurs get started are concrete programs of the FFW we can be proud of.

After all, we can only depend on our collective strength to make us rise to the occasion. With the elections, without the elections, or perhaps, despite the elections, we shall initiate programs and promote advocacies to help our constituency and shall make government accountable for its inadequacies.

The challenge is to sustain our struggle for the right to organize and engage employers in meaningful collective bargaining. We have a legacy of charting our own destiny and making history as creators of the nation’s wealth and architects of social justice and freedom.

Let us regain our place in history.

Federation of Free Workers (FFW)
May 1, 2004