Days before President Duterte delivers his State of the Nation Address, the Nagkaisa! Labor Coalition (Nagkaisa) and the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) lamented the failure of the former to fulfill his promise to workers.
“No end to ENDO. Run over by TRAIN. Waiting in vain for a significant wage increase. Labor rights violated. These, in a nutshell, is how sorry the state of workers are for the past two years,” said the Nagkaisa and KMU in a statement.
“The cycle of unfulfilled promises–old and new–continue to hound workers,” they added.
The labor groups said Duterte’s foremost promise to end “endo” or contractualization has not yet been fulfilled as many remain as contractual workers.
This, as “endo”-practicing employers continue to refuse to heed the call of the government despite the issuance by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and Duterte of Department Order No. 174 and Executive Order No. 51, respectively, both of which bars companies from firing contractual employees covered by the guidelines.
“Endo-lords refused to implement the DOLE regularization order and instead laid-off over 12,000 of its workers,” Nagkaisa! and KMU said.
“Without the President’s decisive action, contractualization will persist,” they added.
The labor sector also lamented the meager wage rates of workers amid the unabated price hikes.
“These increases would not even bring our wages any closer to the P40,000 monthly cost of living,” they said.
“Unabated price hikes have been the norm. Filipino workers are feeling the brunt of rising costs of basic goods and services, including food, transport, electricity, and water as direct result of TRAIN,” said Nagkaisa and KMU.
Duterte is set to deliver his third SONA on July 23. - By Leslie Ann Aquino
Friday, July 20, 2018
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Militant groups hold protest move in Mendiola
Thousands of protesters gathered on Tuesday to call for an increase of minimum wage of workers and end contractualization.
Labor groups such as Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), Nagkaisa and Sentro held a huge protest at Mendiola Peace Arch for the annual Labor Day rally.
“Kontrakwalisayon, wakasan! Wakasan! EO Pinirmahan, kontra manggagawa, walang silbi! Walang silbi!” the groups said.
As the rally was ongoing, President Rodrigo Duterte has signed the Executive Order (EO) concerning issues on contractualization.
The signing of EO was announced during the President’s speech in Cebu City. /jpv
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Workers unite for Labor Day rally vs ‘endo’
 |
| Members of the labor coalition Nagkakaisa hold up fists with construction nails to symbolize the government’s ‘pangakong napako’ or unfulfilled promise of issuing an order ending contractualization. Edd Gumban |
In a joint press conference yesterday, Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) chairman Elmer Labog said the workers are “angry” over Duterte’s failure to sign an executive order that would end job contractualization.
“The growing frustration, disappointment and disenchantment of workers over President Duterte’s failure to fulfill his promise have only bonded workers. We will march as one on Labor Day in a historic first for the Philippine labor movement,” Labog said.
He said the workers will turn the Labor Day celebration into an indignation rally to show their solidarity against contractualization.
Labor groups are up in arms after Duterte’s refusal to sign an EO that will end the practice of contractualization by employers.
Instead of an EO, the President will certify as priority the Security of Tenure bill pending in Congress.
Nagkakaisa labor coalition chairman Michael Mendoza said Duterte gave them false hope that workers would finally be liberated from inhumane employment practices.
“The problem is the President did not even ask for our opinion. We gave five versions of the EO but he did not even talk to us. We were made to wait for two years for nothing,” he said.
The KMU and the Nagkakaisa, which represent the broadest labor coalition since 1980s, have called on workers “of all shapes and sizes” to join the rally.
Sentro secretary-general Joshua Mata reminded Duterte that the working class voted for him in the 2016 presidential race because of his promise to stop contractualization.
“On Labor Day, Malacañang will feel the backlash of the workers. We will show our anger over what happened. Our hope became an empty promise,” he said.
Mata said aside from the need to contend with contractualization practices, workers now also have to endure inadequate wages and the rising prices of commodities and services because of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law initiated by the Duterte administration.
Meanwhile, an opposition lawmaker urged President Duterte yesterday to shelve his Charter change (Cha-cha) initiative and instead work on creating more jobs and fighting inflation or the increase in consumer prices.
Rep. Tom Villarin of party-list group Akbayan made the appeal in the wake of the first quarter Pulse Asia survey showing people were more concerned with jobs and inflation than with Cha-cha or the effort to revise the Constitution to shift the nation to the federal system.
“The Duterte administration should put Cha-cha in the back burner and focus on people’s needs and wants, not its own power agenda,” he said.
He said the people’s concerns as expressed in the survey should prompt the President “to fulfill his promise to end endo (end of contract).”
“While the ABC crowd sees the administration’s anti-crime campaign as a priority, the vast majority of the poor D and E classes don’t see it as such,” he said.
He added that the President and his congressional allies should genuinely work to help people cope with rising prices and to have jobs and decent wages.
While jobs, wages and inflation were the top issues in people’s minds in the Pulse Asia survey, issues that included Cha-cha were the least of their concerns.
The monthly increases in consumer prices were blamed largely on the tax reform law, officially labeled as TRAIN.
According to Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate, the price hikes were caused by new and higher taxes the law has imposed starting in January. – Sheila Crisostomo (The Philippine Star) - April 26, 2018
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Labor group wary of RTWPB-XI motu proprio wage review
The labor coalition NAGKAISA-Davao cautions workers on the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board-Region XI’s initiative to review and possibly raise the region’s minimum wage. “As in the past wage orders, the RTWPB-XI’s evaluation is most likely to end up giving loose change to workers,” said Sofriano “Ka Ondo” Mataro, spokesperson of Nagkaisa-Davao and regional head of ALU-TUCP.
TUCP has petitioned the regional wage board for a P104.00 across-the-board increase but the latter said that it has already initiated a motu proprio review of the existing minimum wage in the region in its meeting on January 17, 2018.
“We doubt that the wage review of RTWPB-XI is not prompted by DOLE Secretary Bello, who seems to be working in cahoots with the employers on the issue of contractualization. If not with TUCP’s petition in late March, we would not know that the regional wage board has taken the initiative to take a look at workers’ wages since January”, stated Joel Bañas, spokesperson and Chairperson of SENTRO Davao.
He further explained, “It’s already three months now and no labor group have been consulted and no public hearings were called to discuss the matter. If the regional wage board is talking to some groups, it is not the workers but the employers. Is the right of workers to be heard doesn’t matter nowadays?”
“Agravante said that the wage board has undertaken studies on the region’s economic conditions including the effects of the TRAIN Law, where are the results of these much-vaunted studies? What are its findings?” asks Remy Torres, spokesperson of Partido ng Manggagawa (PM).
Remy Torres is referring to Raymundo Agravante, chairperson of RTWPB-XI and the regional director of the Department of Labor and Employment-Region XI.
“We need to raise workmen’s wages. The P104.00 petition of TUCP is not even enough to recover the lost purchasing power of the regional wage which is P132.70”, asserted Ka Ondo, spokesperson of the group and a convenor of Nagkaisa-Davao.
According to the website of NWPC (National Wages and Productivity Commission), the real value of the region’s minmum wage of P340.00 is a measly P207.30. ” And these figures are as of February 9, 2018. The impact of the excise and value-added taxes under the TRAIN Law is still not factored in”, he added.
The labor coalition alleged that workers are staggering from the effects of the TRAIN Law which inflated prices of basic commodities. The Philippine Statistics Authority confirmed this in an announcement recently that inflation in March 2018 surged to 4.3%.
The law lists ten criteria on which the wage board would base its decision in fixing wages. Among them were the rise in the cost of living, the purchasing power of the peso and workers’ demand for a raise. But Joel Bañas of SENTRO Davao claims, “Since its creation thirty years ago, the regional wage boards has only one consideration on issuing wage orders, which is the employers’ capacity to pay, forsaking the workers’ capacity to buy.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)