By MIGUEL Q. TAYLOR
Sixteen years in office, and Mr. Marcos has yet to decide whether he wants to help his friends or his country.
With the nation plunging deeper into the rathole of crisis, time is running out.
Many doubt that Marcos, once labeled the strongman of Asia, will be given another chance. Faced with growing resentment both here and abroad. Marcos is slowly losing the Spartan image that earned him the awe, and the fear, of his people in the early seventies. His profound skill in bending the course of events to his will, at the same time thwarting his opponents, is not the thing to surprise us anymore, like a magic trick that has lost its effect.
That this most shrewd of men should fall before the interests of a favored few is pure and bitter irony for those who, after working themselves into living skeletons, still fail to see their true interests and aspirations represented. The working class has patiently borne with the government for almost a decade. And only recently, a new issue spurred them into action.
Same Dog, Different Collar
When Martial Law was lifted last January, the workers saw the opportunity to air their grievances. What they soon discovered was just the opposite–the same dog with a different collar. As in Martial Law days, men in uniform came to break picket lines and arrest the strikers.
When the demand was raised for a restoration of the right to strike, Cabinet Bill No. 45 was drafted. Now with the strike bill approved at the Batasang Pambansa and awaiting Marcos’s signature, the worker dismisses it as another sham not only to bolster the normalization scheme, but to also serve as a warning device for big industries.
Then what does he really want? “The president took away the workers’ right to strike, therefore he should also restore it,” Felixberto Olalia of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) explained. “Why give it to the Batasan where it will be pressured by different management blocs?”
Cabinet Bill No. 45 was not only being pushed for approval by government and management sectors. Olalia added that the bill itself was drafted without any labor participation in a Tripartite meet last March 28 to 29. He therefore called for a nationwide work stoppage at a sympo-rally last August 9 if ever the bill is approved.
(Multi)national Interest
An outcome of a collusion between state and management officials, Cabinet Bill No. 45 contains provisions which hardly adapt to the worker’s needs. The so-called vital firms exempted from the right to strike include mining and banking companies, export, processing and manufacturing industries, as well as infrastructure, hospitals, schools and colleges.
Workers object to this, claiming that so long as the laborer finds injustice in a company, he should therefore have the inherent right to strike.
The requirement for a 30-day notice to the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MOLE) before a strike can be legally staged is likewise condemned by unions for the risk involved.
It is pointed out that within such a period, the management can always prepare and hire scabs to continue the work left by the strikers. A company is hurt most when struck with an element of surprise–without it, how can a strike be effective?
The bill demands for a two-thirds vote by secret balloting among the union members. The KMU dismisses this as a device by which management can be warned of the planned action and take steps to wipe out the strike before it erupts. They can dismiss troublemakers in the company without being called to account, since union busting activities are by no means prohibited in the bill.
Following all requirements does not ensure the success of the strike since the president or the MOLE can intervene anytime in the name of “national security and interest.” Says Ernesto Arellano of the Philippine Association of Nationalist Labor Organization (PANALO), “Sa CB 45 ay ipinagbibili ang Filipino labor sa mga dayuhang industriya.”
The bill is suspected to be linked with the $13 billion external debt of the Marcos regime to the International Monetary Fund–World Bank. As a sequel to the Labor Code of 1974, P.D. 823 and 849, and General Order No. 5, plus all the limitations imposed on the worker, Cabinet Bill No. 45 surely invites foreign investment to local shores.
Four Lives, Two Pesos
For an inherent right denied by law since the onset of Martial Law, a high price is being paid. In the midst of their demands for the inclusion of a P2 allowance into their wages, three employees of the Polyamide Corporation and one of the Metallied Industries were shot to death.
No union ever contemplates striking for the fun of it; actually there is no fun in striking. Picket lines have to be kept day and night, in all types of weather, in order to paralyze production and stop the flow of commodities from the factory to the community. When the strike drags on for months, the problems extend to the family of the striker.
But for Olalia and the KMU, the fight for the scrapping of Cabinet Bill No. 45 and restoration of the right to strike moves on. “The worker has struggled for the right to strike since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Here in our country, we continue despite the ban. Our workers have surely earned this right already.”
Laborers do not only strike to get concessions. They strike when their rights are ignored and trampled upon, when the management acts with discrimination and oppression, and above all, to uphold their dignity as human beings. And Cabinet Bill No. 45 frustrates all these. Unfortunately, the rules above do not realize this. They have no interest in the welfare, livelihood and ideals of the Filipino worker. ●
Published in print in the Collegian’s August 20, 1981 issue.
