NAGKAISA! Statement on the Covid-19 Surge this January 2022

In moments of extreme crisis, governments have the responsibility to provide effective leadership and assure people that they will not be abandoned. States that consistently fail to deliver on their duties do not deserve the mandate to govern. In this light, the present surge of Covid-19 cases within the first month of 2022 is a serious danger to millions of Filipinos that demands decisive action from the Philippine government. 

The NAGKAISA! Labor coalition asserts that what we need is a comprehensive, people-centered, and health-based pandemic response to successfully overcome the present surge and to prevent similar events in the future. This requires more than widespread vaccination but also the employment of more compassionate, free, and accessible health protocol procedures rather than simply reverting back to heavy-handed lockdown measures. 

We call on the Philippine government to get its act together. While continuing to ramp up vaccination efforts, it must take steps to provide free mass testing to all those that require it, ensure sufficient resources for contact tracing (including job security for contact tracers), hire more health workers, and provide frontliners decent compensation and wages in order to prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed. These are the crucial steps towards creating a proactively competent pandemic response system. 

More than two years into the present pandemic, organized labor, the private sector, as well as the general public are in desperate need of decisive leadership. Now is not the time for punitive measures such as prohibiting the unvaccinated from accessing public transportation. Recent moves such as the DILG’s order for LGUs to list the names of the unvaccinated resemble more a witch-hunt to merely punish and shame people, instead of actually working on providing a systematic pandemic response. 

The government must step up to provide us with a coherent plan against Covid-19, not blame the rising cases merely on a lack of discipline or the failure to comply with health protocols. In a situation where RT-PCR testing remains very expensive for most Filipinos, to what extent can we realistically expect our people to simply “follow the rules”? 

To avoid daily infections in the tens of thousands or even more, the government must open spaces for meaningful policy dialogue and participation in decision-making for organized labor. Trade unions, together with other stakeholders, must have a voice in designing and implementing the country’s pandemic response. Our national Covid-19 strategy must be centered on providing dignified and secure lives to all Filipinos as we collectively weather this present situation.  

NAGKAISA believes that the legacy of this administration will be measured primarily by the number of lives it is able to save, the decent jobs it is able to provide, and the security that it is able to guarantee to millions of Filipinos during one of the most challenging moments in our nation’s history.

PRESS RELEASE

NAGKAISA Labor Coalition

13 January 2022

Nagkaisa! Calls for New Initiative to End Armed Conflict

Today, in commemoration of world peace day, the biggest labor coalition in the country calls for an end to trade union repression, extra-judicial killings and to end Asia’s longest running armed Conflict.

Nagkaisa Labor coalition (N1) asserts that Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs is a complete failure. After causing the death of tens of thousands, Mr. Duterte himself admits that his administration is nowhere close to delivering its promise of ending the drug-menace that he claims to have engulfed our society.

Meanwhile, Mr. Duterte is also a dismal failure in his peace initiative with the communist insurgency, even after the CPP other Maoist organizations enabled his administration in its first few years.

The bloody war on drugs, together with the declaration of an all-of-society approach to wipe out the armed communist insurgency, created a climate of impunity that paved the way for extra-judicial killings, turning the Philippines into one of the most dangerous countries for trade unionists, human rights and environmental activists, lawyers and journalists.

Enough killings! It’s time to give peace a chance.

In this context, NAGKAISA calls for an end to the bloody wars in drugs.

It also calls for the abolition of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) that has been responsible for widespread red-tagging now being experienced by the labor movement and other social movements. Nagkaisa believes that the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process should take over its tasks.

In preparation for a new administration, the Nagkaisa also calls on the leaders of Christian churches, Muslim communities , trade unions and civil society groups to initiate measures for the de-escalation of violence and to  stop the rampage of EJKs in urban and rural communities.

Faith-based, non-governmental and civil society groups need to offer an alternative. Instead of keeping their guns blazing, warring factions of society, an alternative forum must be initiated that should hold genuine peace talks that seriously seek an end to armed conflicts on the basis of social justice and the common good.

Labor groups slam PNP for spying on unions

A coalition of the country’s biggest labor groups slammed the Philippine National Police (PNP) for sending its operatives to snoop in the offices of its member unions. 

Nagkaisa chair and Federation of Free Workers (FFW) Sonny Matula expressed alarm over reports that a group of persons who introduced themselves as members of the Quezon City Police Department visited the office of Sentro ng Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Sentro) in Metro Manila last Tuesday to inquire about its activities.

“Without relevant legal documents officially identifying and authorizing them and stating the purpose of their visit, they repeatedly asked for information regarding Sentro’s office, the other unions present there, and their activities,” Matula said. 

The suspicious individuals, he said, then visited the premises of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) to inquire about Nagkaisa, of which Sentro is a member. 

Matula said Sentro was later able to confirm that the said individuals were indeed members of the QCPD. 

Nagkaisa condemened both incidents as a form of harassment of trade union offices and its personnel and demanded PNP chief Guillermo Eleazar to immediately put a stop to such activities. 

“Given important matters the police should attend to, surveillance of legitimate trade union work should not be among them,” Matula said. 

To finally address the matter, Matula already sent a letter to Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and PNP requesting for a meeting on Friday.  -BY SAMUEL MEDENILLA

Nagkaisa Opposes 13th Month Pay By Installment, backs DTI Loan without interest

The Nagkaisa labor coalition  sees no reason to defer or pay by installment the 13th month pay of the workers for this year as the government stands ready to support small businesses amid the CoVID 19 pandemic. 

"Pwede naman" installment basta fully paid before Dec 24. Other than that we will be transgressing the letter and spirit of the 13th month pay law.

We heard from the good DTI secretary that his department had already reached out to Small Business Corporation to develop a facility that will provide zero-interest loans to companies needing 13th month funding.

As early as last year, Nagkaisa also had called on

 DOLE Secretary Silvestre Bello III for the government to grant 13th month subsidy to some 1.5 million to 5 million workers in the small and micro enterprises (SMEs). 

Workers are more in distress, especially women workers in micro and small enterprises,  which were hit hardest by this pandemic. 

Nagkaisa agrees that the only way to ensure that the 13th month pay is enjoyed by all workers in all establishments is to give no interest loan or subsidy for SMEs.

Last year, Nagkaisa was able to formulate its own public employment agenda called the Unemployment Support and Work Assistance Guarantee (USWAG) that it submitted before DOLE last year and during the subsequent employment recovery meetings this year. USWAG is part of Nagkaisa’s more elaborate agenda called State of Labor and its Agenda on Recovery or SOLAR.