Before even reaching his first 100 days in office, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is already in deep scrutiny by labor groups due to his incoherent and deceiving promises.
In the first of his agenda, Marcos’s focus was the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery. He assumed the presidency amid nearly 3 million Filipinos out of work, and the P12-trillion debt that the Duterte presidency left behind.
The World Bank also projected that increasing food and fuel prices may increase the number of poor Filipinos in the country, adding that a 10-percent increase in food price adds one million more Filipinos below the poverty line.
Jerome Adonis, Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) secretary general, expressed frustration that Marcos did not even mention the issue of contractualization, one of the problems that has long plagued workers, during his first major policy speech to Congress in July.
“Hindi na nga nila magawang gawing regular [yung mga manggagawa], tatanggalan pa nila ng trabaho,” Adonis said, in response to Marcos’s first State of the Nation Address.
Instead of resolving deep-seated labor woes, last July, Marcos’s economic team vowed to “rightsize” the government bureaucracy to dissolve “ineffective, redundant, and inefficient government bodies”.
Under the rightsizing plan, over 2 million employees could be affected, and 187 government agencies and government-owned corporations would be streamlined through restructuring, merging, or even abolition.
The Confederation of Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees said in July, that the plan to rightsize is “part of neoliberal policies to ensure that foreign and local elite interests come first before the needs of the people,” adding that the government should instead regularize all its workers.
A bill to rightsize the government is now pending before Congress. It is one of Marcos’s pet bills in the 19th Congress.
Then candidate Marcos also pledged to rewrite the Security of Tenure Bill, and he expressed interest in making it a legislative priority. He promised to “amend, rewrite and fine-tune” the bill, declaring that he will sign the bill into law “if the new version is good.”
The Makabayan Bloc in the House of Representatives refiled a “pro-worker” Security of Tenure Bill last July which seeks to prohibit any kind of contractualization, and to categorize violations of the proposed measure as an unfair labor practice.
The Security of Tenure Act is still under the hands of Congress after the 2019 veto of the old version of the bill by then President Rodrigo Duterte.
"We have long called for an end to contractual labor in all forms, but Duterte himself betrayed the workers when he turned around from his campaign promise to end contractualization," KMU Chairperson Elmer Labog said last year.
Marcos’s first 100 days did not showcase the promises he said during his campaign; the bills he prioritized are still under the hands of Congress. Worse, all his major policy failures happened amid the backdrop of eroding minimum wage due to inflation.
Metro Manila’s minimum was last raised in May to P537, which, according to the Department of Labor and Employment, considered the increase in the price of basic goods and fuel products. Last month, the country’s inflation rate reached 6.9 percent, the fastest in four years.
Should this trend continue, prices will continue to skyrocket, further watering down workers’ already meager wages. In fact, because of inflation, the real value of the National Capital Region minimum wage is already down to just P500.44.
In his first 100 days, the president is under scrutiny because of his undelivered promises to workers who are deeply affected by the economic crisis and the systemic ills that have long wreaked havoc among Filipino workers.
“Nakinig kami ng isa’t kalahating oras pero wala kaming napala, wala namang bago sa sinabi niya. Wala syang tugon sa panawagan ng manggagawa,” Adonis said. ●
