Wealth fund should come from wealth tax

Nagkaisa statement on sovereign wealth fund

Pera naming mga manggagawa yan, bakit kayo ang nag-uusap?

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) are essentially profit-driven state-owned investment funds. Some of our neighboring countries who want to make the most out of their surplus—usually foreign exchange generated from exports—established state-owned entities to invest their excess capital on various instruments. Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, among others, created their own SWFs. 

With the potential of SWFs to grow, they can distort incentives in an economy where they are invested enough to favor specific economic activities and enterprises. Although SWFs usually invest in foreign instruments, there is nothing stopping them from pouring investments on profitable economic activities and enterprises at home, thus, making SWFs a strategic tool for industrial policy. But this is not necessarily the motivation for the proposed Maharlika Wealth Fund. 

Now, should workers support the government’s attempt to create an SWF? 

That public pension funds are identified as sources of financing for the SWF already earns the proposed fund minus points. Public pension funds are fragile. There is a reason both SSS and GSIS are very careful in their investment decisions and that is because that is how they secure future generations of Filipinos. GSIS should know the risks involved especially in foreign money market, after all, their exposure to the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis may have costed the pension fund some of its resources. 

Can politicians pushing for SWF guarantee the security of workers’ retirement funds while exposing it to potential losses from profit-driven, speculative investment decisions? House representatives who back the SWF argue that pension funds are guaranteed by government funds anyway, and that the SWF will come with sufficient safeguard measures. 

But NAGKAISA has a better idea to secure workers’ pensions, and that is by not exposing them to unnecessary risks. If SWF should be pursued, it must be funded by true surpluses generated by the economy—the proceeds from wealth tax! 

In 2020, NAGKAISA floated the idea of taxing the unused assets of the wealthiest in the country. The tax revenue from the wealth tax could have funded pandemic recovery measures of the government. Now that the Philippines is gradually recovering, potential revenues from wealth tax can now be used to fund ideas such as SWF without risking workers’ funds.

And what is this obsession about the term “Maharlika”? If the proponents want to connect SWF to a concept from Philippine history, then they should have kept in mind that the Philippine government does not have a good record in managing public funds. That fact is also historical. Unless the proponents have concrete plans about protecting the SWF from turning into a Maharlika Wealth Scam, House Bill 6398 cannot just be allowed to pass. In any case, workers remain critical of this proposal especially when their pensions are on the line. ###

PRESS RELEASE

NAGKAISA Labor Coalition

03 December 2022

Nagkaisa celebrates Bonifacio Day in ‘Blank Paper’ protest

A popular protest symbol against the zero covid policy and censorship in China found its way into the Philippines during the workers’ celebration of Andres Bonifacio’s 159th birthday. 

The Nagkaisa Labor Coalition said the ‘Blank Paper’ protest is the Filipino workers’ adaptation of the symbolic protest to press for a Labor Agenda that the group finds sorely lacking in the Marcos administration.

“Bonifacio Day is always a day of protest for Filipino workers, but today is the first time that most of our placards bear no slogans. It is because the blank papers themselves convey the message that a labor agenda remains blank or missing under this new administration,” said Nagkaisa Chairman and Federation of Free Workers President Sonny Matula. 

Nagkaisa staged the ‘Blank Paper’ and ‘die-in’ protest at Liwasang Bonifacio before joining the United Labor together with Kilusang Mayo Uno and Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino in a march to Mendiola.

Matula said workers want a Labor Agenda as basis for continuing engagements with the government as the lack of it implies disregard if not outright neglect of labor in the face soaring prices, deteriorating quality of jobs, and chronic unemployment problems, among others.

“Our proposed Labor Agenda embodies the workers’ most urgent concerns as well as reforms in labor policies to decisively address poverty, inequality, and injustice in the country,” stressed Matula. 

The Nagkaisa Labor Agenda includes demands for a wage hike, public employment program, labor rights and an end to contractualization, affordable and quality public services, and mechanisms for a continuing policy dialogue on structural reforms.

Reiterating their call for a P100 wage hike, Partido Manggagawa Chair Renato Magtubo, stated: “The amount is merely to recover wages lost to inflation. It’s a relief for a minimum wage that remains at starvation level but still way too far from achieving living wages and improvements in workers’ standard of living as provided under the Constitution.”

On his part, Sentro ng Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Sentro) Secretary General Josua Mata, attributed the prevailing regime of low wages to the unresolved problems of unemployment and contractualization. 

“Contractualization, both in the private and public sector, significantly weakens the exercise of other labor rights such as freedom of association and collective bargaining, thus, keeping the life of ‘endo’ workers to the barest minimum,” explained Mata.

He added that without a robust public employment program in key sectors of the economy, including in climate and environment, the army of unemployed will just continue to crowd the market of cheap labor.  

Moreover, inadequacy and high cost of services aggravates this problem, said Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK) leader Jillian Roque, who also warned that the Marcos administration’s massive rightsizing plan would only lead to further deterioration of public services.

In protecting labor rights, Nagkaisa demands a solid renunciation of the previous administration’s policy on extra-judicial killings, the scrapping of anti-union laws as well as the abolition of anti-union bodies involved in red-tagging like the NTF-ELCAC and the Joint Industrial Peace and Concern Office (JIPCO).

The coalition is likewise campaigning for the ratification and effective implementation of ILO Convention 190 to protect women from violence and harassment in the workplace.

Holiday economics not good for workers

MANILA, Philippines — A labor coalition said yesterday that the government’s revival of holiday economics will not benefit workers because their meager income is not enough to sustain their basic needs.

The Nagkaisa labor coalition was reacting to Proclamation No. 90 signed by President Marcos last Nov. 11, which aims to promote “spending economics at a time workers need more jobs and extra source of income to meet their families’ basic food and non-food requirements.”

“There is a need to adjust these holidays pursuant to the principle of holiday economics wherein a longer weekend will help encourage domestic travel and increase tourism expenditures in the country,” Marcos said in the proclamation.

Partido Manggagawa chairman Renato Magtubo said the latest statistics on the rise in the number of underemployed underpin workers’ need for more income to fight soaring inflation.

“The most pressing concern of the working class today is their capacity to spend above their basic needs, thus, poverty wages would prevent them from enjoying holiday economics,” Magtubo said in a statement.

He added, “If President Marcos really wanted to perk up the economy, he should join workers in asking Congress to legislate a wage hike as well as establish a robust public employment program to shore up the income of every Filipino.”

Annie Geron of the Public Services Independent Labor Confederation said: “The wage hike must also cover the tens of thousands of public sector workers under contractual and casual arrangements whose pay scales are even lower than the poverty threshold of P12,000 per month.”

The coalition also hit the inclusion of Bonifacio Day and Araw ng Kagitingan (Day of Valor) into the package, saying “it sweeps aside the historical value of the two holidays on the country’s struggle for freedom in exchange for commercial value the tourism industry would gain from such historical revision.”

Nagkaisa chairman Sonny Matula said “there are many ways to promote local tourism like increasing the government’s budget for developing green infrastructure and creating green jobs in tourism areas but revising history should never be part of this menu.”

“Like Labor Day, Araw ng Kagitingan and Bonifacio Day are significant days dear to workers, and the trade union movement is committed to commemorate the struggles on their historical dates and not on the revised commercialized dates dictated by holiday economics,” said Matula.

CHR commends gov’t aid to workers

Meanwhile, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) commended the government for the provision of financial assistance to workers harmed or killed on duty in times of calamity or disaster.

Specifically, it lauded the Employees’ Compensation Commission (ECC)’s program which is extended to government workers, private sector employees, self-employed individuals, house helpers and sea-based overseas workers.

For government workers, all compulsory members of Government Service Insurance System, including uniformed personnel, are qualified to receive financial assistance if they suffer work-related sickness, injury, or death when responding to or working during a calamity.

For those in the private sector, the companies can apply for calamity assistance on behalf of the employees through the Social Security System.

The benefit for government personnel is P200 per day while employees in the private sector can claim up to P480 per day. – Rhodina Villanueva - The Philippine Star / Elizabeth Marcelo

Nagkaisa condemns arrest of 2 KMU leaders on robbery and assault charges

Nagkaisa joins the Kilusang Mayo Uno in denouncing the arrest of two of its officers, Kara Taggaoa and Larry Valbuena, on robbery and direct assault charges filed against them by the Philippine National Police.

Kara Taggaoa is KMU’s International Officer while and Larry Valbuena is the President of Pasiklab Operators and Drivers Association (PASODA). The two were charged of the crime while participating in a public assembly.

While both charges, fishy as they stand, are all bailable offenses, their arrest however sends a chilling message to the whole labor movement as it continues to portray a systematic pattern of trade union repression done in many ways, including the filing of trump up charges against trade union activists that the courts, in recent resolutions on related cases, have judiciously dismissed.

This practice by the PNP at treating legitimate dissent and advocacies as anti-crime operations has no place in the world of work where labor rights are fully guaranteed by the Constitution and international conventions.

The freedom of association and peaceful assembly are grouped together not because they are often intertwined but they are part of freedom of expression.

We demand that the new administration review and reform existing policies on this matter. Police harassment and intimidations on trade unions must be stopped. 

PRESS STATEMENT

NAGKAISA Labor Coalition

10 October 2022