Over 100 local labor unions gathered in Ermita on March 18 to assert a resounding demand to this elections’ senatorial candidates: Put in the same amount of work they do.
Groups in attendance at the Workers’ Challenge 2025 enjoined 50 out of 66 senatorial candidates to pass legislation on three key workers’ issues—instituting a national living wage, ensuring security of tenure, and protecting freedom to organize. Yet an entire month passed in silence, as most senatorial candidates, including those leading the polls, offered no response. This is a change of tack for the likes of Tito Sotto who once pushed for a 14th month pay and Ben Tulfo who supported the creation of help desks for migrant workers.
Some keepers of the workers’ agenda still took on the challenge. Part of that is the Makabayan bloc, which has consistently rallied behind workers’ rights, best embodied by its labor representative Jerome Adonis. On one side of the fence are grassroots representatives, poised by experience and representation to champion workers’ rights. The other side, however, facilitates the disenfranchisement of these same laborers—or are funded by those who do. The apathy of senatorial frontrunners is no surprise, as prevailing campaign finance mechanisms are inimical to the fruition of workers’ calls.
Every election is costly. In fact, these midterms are shaping up to be Philippine history’s most expensive, grazing 2022’s P258 billion total adspend, with P10 billion on broadcast ads alone pre-campaign. In this heyday of big-ticket advertising, achieving name recall depends on financial muscle.
By themselves, the poll leaders already boast business loyalties that are mired by records of labor abuses. Duterte collaborator Rodante Marcoleta was gung-ho in the former’s push to forcibly shut down ABS-CBN and boot thousands of media workers. Villar-owned PrimeWater is notorious for joint ventures with water districts that transfer operations to the firm, displacing existing workers left out of the new arrangement.
For those without business empires of their own, the game revolves around securing the right tycoon to bankroll their ambitions. Elections are open season for both candidate and benefactor to court one another—so the candidate gains power and their donors are repaid with government posts. Marcos Jr., who has rewarded at least six of his campaign donors with appointments, speaks truth to this claim.
That business moguls fill candidates’ donor rolls casts a shadow on the workers’ agenda. However, it also impresses the need for genuine grassroots candidates in the chambers.
Their triumphs, however, must be followed with electoral reform. They are incomplete without review of Republic Act 7166, which made a single Statement of Contributions and Expenditures that candidates must submit post-elections as the main yardstick for donor transparency. Congress can then look at Republic Act 9006, the pandora’s box that allowed political ads to air on broadcast media, which was almost outright banned before its passage. In their stead, political advertising can be subsidized by the state, allowing for equal footing among all candidates.
Workers will not wait idly for campaigns that banner their calls. They will pose challenge after challenge to those who aspire for the mantle of government—a post that demands no less than a worker’s grit and militancy. ⏺
