By Butch Umengan
MANILA — Progressive trade unions commemorated international labour day on May 1 with protests across the Philippines against the ill effects of globalisation.
While the pro-government Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) and the Federation of Free Workers (FFW-LACC) met with President Fidel Ramos, who announced increases in social security benefits which labour groups decried as "too little and insulting", hundreds of thousands of workers marched and demonstrated.
In Davao, in Mindanao, the National Federation of Labor-National Confederation of Labor (NFL-NCL) mobilised 2000 people calling for wage hikes and social protection.
In Zamboanga City, the local chapter of Kapatiran ng mga Pangulo ng Unyon sa Pilipinas (KPUP) and NFL-NCL massed 2000 workers and met with government and employer groups to demand wage increases, added social protection programs and labour legislative reforms. Rallies were also held in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan.
In the Visayas region, in Cebu, the NFL-NCL joined other progressive labour groups in a rally of 3000. In Bacolod City, around 7500 Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP- Filipino Workers' Solidarity) members, mostly sugar workers, marched and rallied to protest against the decline of the local sugar industry and cane workers' deteriorating living standards.
In Iloilo, some 3000 workers allied with the NCL and the BMP rallied for a living wage and improved working conditions. Workers' marches and rallies were also held in Aklan and the Bicol province.
Other progressive labour groups which took to the streets included the Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL), the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and the Piglas-Kamao.
The largest demonstration was led by the combined forces of the BMP, the KPUP and the NCL in Metro Manila. In the morning of May Day, the BMP-KPUP-NCL held an indoor mass meeting of 31,000 workers at the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, Quezon City, before marching 15 kilometres to Mendiola Bridge in front of Malacanang Palace.
The BMP-KPUP-NCL launched a campaign to reform the labour laws. Among the demands are: a minimum living wage, wage indexation, workers' tax exemptions, an end to casualisation and subcontracting, amendments to strike and union organising laws, social protection reforms, reorganisation and reforms of the various government agencies dealing with labour and outlawing of unfair labour practices, including child labour.
Since the late '80s, Filipino workers' living and working conditions have taken a dive. Real wages have fallen while consumer prices climb. The daily minimum wage in Manila is P185 (A$9) but its real worth, using 1988 as base year, is only P73.47. A majority of workers have daily incomes which fall below the poverty line which is pegged at P365 for a family of six.
Minimum wages are low, yet many employers violate wage and labour standards with impunity. Of the total of 45,029 businesses inspected by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in 1996, 54.9% were found to have violated labour standards; 21.7% violated minimum wage laws.
Unemployment is officially 9%. More than 2 million Filipino workers are without jobs, and the figure continues to grow. The largest drop in employment is in the agricultural sector. This has dramatically shifted labour to the service sector, which grew from 5 million to 11 million workers from 1980 to 1996.
Jobless growth
Despite posting significant gains in gross national product over the past few years, the economy epitomises the jobless growth of most developing countries. This is not simply a matter of falling employment rates, but of falling productivity. Low productivity means low incomes and impoverishment.
Another sign of jobless growth is the burgeoning of the informal sector. It is estimated that more than 17% of the work force (or more than 4 million workers) are part of the urban informal sector.
Labour "flexibility" is running over job security and union membership. A study by the School of Labor and Industrial Relations estimates that one in 10 regular jobs have been subcontracted or casualised since 1990.
Union membership is declining. Trade unions in the middle of 1996 reported an inflated total membership of 3,595,000 workers in 7981 unions. This represented 32% of wage and salary workers.
However, government data on collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) reveal the true state of unionisation. Only 364,000 workers or 3.2% of wage and salary workers in 3264 unions, were covered by enterprise CBAs in 1996.
Organised labour is badly fragmented. There are 161 general trades federations and nine trade union centres or confederations registered with the DOLE.
Disunity and a low level of organisation forebodes difficult times for workers and their organisations as globalisation assimilates local economies. Government officials continue to prod workers and unions into accepting the "inevitable".
If unions choose to dig trenches against globalisation, they will never get out of there, said DOLE under-secretary Buenaventura Magsalin. Even employers groups like the Employers Confederation of Labor (ECOP) agree that moves to "right-size" the work force in line with global competition will create industrial turbulence, either passive or violent.
BMP chairperson Popoy Lagman says, "If we do not organise the working class fight back, workers all over the world stand to lose all gains and concessions won by the trade union movement over the past century."
Felicisimo Carullo, the NCL president, called for effective strategies saying that after the labour opposition to the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) last November, now is the time to transform protest slogans into concrete actions.
In a step towards unity, the Philippine Organization of Workers Empowerment (POWER) and the United Workers of the Philippines (UWP) joined forces in Quezon City on April 12-13 in the first labour federation merger in the country since the early '70s.
More than 300 local union delegates from some 164 unions nationwide, with a combined worker membership of 18,500, resolved to merge the two organisations. They also called on all other federations and labour centres to set aside their differences and sectarian interests and unite in a "common house of labour".
POWER and UWP are members of the National Confederation of Labor. The NCL is composed of seven labour federations with a combined membership of 365 local unions and 105,000 dues-paying union members covered by collective agreements.
The NCL presents itself as a third major labour organisation counterposed to the TUCP and the FFW-LACC, the major trade union centres aligned with the ruling parties and which are affiliates of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and World Congress of Labor (WCL) respectively.
The NCL, together with the KPUP and BMP, intends to submit its May Day labour legislative agenda when Congress opens in June. "May Day saw the working class ratify our proposals. We shall submit them as a collective bargaining proposal for the whole working class", Lagman announced during the May Day rally.
[Butch Umengan is a research officer for the National Confederation of Labour.]