LABOR WATCH

Workers Attacked But Undaunted

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared war against militant Filipino workers “terrorizing factories” after 9/11 but, if anything, it’s the workers who are being terrorized by capitalists and the state. Terrorized but not terrified, and still fighting for their democratic rights.

BY SANDRA NICOLAS
Bulatlat.com

March was a tense, violent month for Generoso M. Sasis, Jr. and his fellow workers in Sulpicio Lines, the second largest inter-island shipping company in the Philippines. That’s when some 660 of them went on strike, paralyzed all but two ships of the belligerent company nationwide, and were violently broken up by high-powered rifle-wielding police and soldiers. They were also detained without food.

In the aftermath, 310 of them were laid off including Sasis, president of the Unyon ng Mandaragat ng Sulpicio Lines Inc. and Solid Towage and Lighterage-ANGLO-KMU (UMSS-ANGLO-KMU). Yet though jobless for over a month now, Sasis and his two dozen fellow workers attending this year’s Labor Day celebration-cum-miting de avance for party-list group Anakpawis are far from despondent.

Like all militant unionists, he minces no words in analyzing their situation: “Iyong nangyayari sa amin sa UMSS ay parang nangyayari rin sa napakaraming Pilipinong manggagawa. Talagang ang manggagawa at kapitalista hindi talaga magkakasundo – kaya ganun at ginagamit [ng mga kapitalista] ang estado” (What’s happening to us in UMSS is the same thing happening to so many Filipino workers. Workers and capitalists will never really get along – and so it’s like that and [the capitalists] use the state). He also says that their attendance in the May Day rally shows that they are not demoralized and that “tuloy ang laban (the fight continues)!”

Attacking workers

When the most recent bust of the Philippine economy hit in 1997, heralded by the so-called Asian crisis, capitalists were quick to exploit the situation. They argued that since everyone was suffering, workers should show some solidarity and place their demands for just wages and humane working conditions on hold. Capitalists also claimed, patronizingly, that the workers would only put themselves out of jobs if they pressed their “ unreasonable” demands.

But if capitalists pleaded a dip in their profits, workers faced far worse with rising joblessness and collapsing real incomes. Capitalist greed pushed workers ever harder against the wall and there was an explosion of strikes – and of state fascism and union repression. The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) noted a six-fold increase in recorded cases of workers victimized by rights violations between 1998 and 1999, from 1,323 workers to 7,647. There were 4,102 victims in 2002 down to a little over 2,000 last year – almost 90 percent of which were of assaults of picketlines.

Overwhelmingly, these assaults usually led by state police and military forces were “legitimized” by being assaults on strikes declared “illegal” upon the Department of Labor and Employment’s (DoLE) issuing of Assumptions of Jurisdiction (AJ) or the National Labor Relations Commission’s (NLRC) injunctions or restraining orders.

Dividing workers

Yet violent attacks on strikers are just capitalists’ last resort against unionists determined and able enough to get as far as that. The way to the picketline is a long and difficult obstacle course. It starts as early as when workers apply for jobs with rigorous background checks by prospective employers to screen those with trade union experience. In export zones, applicants are even asked for endorsements from local government officials.

Budding unions and federations already face difficult organizing conditions to begin with. Contractualization has become a pressing problem with workers becoming merely transient or, at the very least, perpetually lacking job security with their stay beyond merely months-long contracts completely dependent on the discretion of employers. But there are also burdensome bureaucratic requirements. Incipient unions need the authorization of the state with a 30-day waiting period upon submission of bureaucratic requirements to the Bureau of Labor Relations (BLR) – giving management time to maneuver against worker leaders and divide potential members. Employers are even allowed to appeal against them.

If a militant union manages to be formed, its key leaders are closely monitored and at any time may find “management prerogatives” or “company rules and regulations” invoked to get them laid off. Finally, launching strikes themselves technically involves a procedure lengthy enough that management becomes forewarned, with the union subsequently losing the critical element of surprise.

In practice, the state hasn’t even restricted itself to passively making sure that these rules are complied with and it has actively used its considerable coercive powers on the side of management against Philippine workers. As it did with the UMSS, virtually all strikes are declared illegal at the outset with AJs and return-to-work orders issued. For one thing, this paves the way for the use of military, police and even private security agencies to break picketlines. For another, union leaders can be penalized heavily for promoting “illegal” strikes.

Strikes are for all intents and purposes banned in the public sector and in export processing zones. As a result of all these, the abstract right to strike enshrined in the Philippine Constitution and the Labor Code is, in reality, virtually non-existent with capitalists and the state coming down hard on those workers who assert it.

Fearing workers

Despite all these difficulties, Filipino workers have not given up their democratic rights, whether in the factories or in society at large. In this they join the rest of the country’s working people and together they are the targets of rising state fascism. Imperialist crisis and the US “war on terror” are driving a brutal campaign of repression. Workers on picketlines are violently attacked with truncheons, clubs and water cannons. Some 44 members of the progressive party-lists groups Bayan Muna and Anakpawis have already been killed.

Nevertheless, the people are undaunted. UMSS President Sasis for instance tells how the laid off Sulpicio Lines workers haven’t chosen to quietly skulk away. While he is with a contingent attending the Labor Day rally in Liwasan Bonifacio in Manila, there are those who’ve gone to major Sulpicio Lines ports such as in Cebu to help in organizing efforts there. “Nag-aaraw-araw ang mga mobilisasyon doon” (There are mobilizations there every day), he smiles.

“Para sa amin, kung kumilos lahat at sa tulong ng ibang progresibong pwersa ay makakamit ang kahit ano” (For us, if everyone unites and with the help of other progressive forces, everything can be won). Fitting words on May 1, when the workers of the world unite in celebration.  Bulatlat.com

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