A check into the LUP shows that the Cojuangcos do not intend to retain parcels of land for agriculture. Consequently, more than 5,000 sugar farmers face to lose their jobs and worse, their right to Hacienda Luisita as farm beneficiaries under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), the centerpiece program of the post-dictator administration of Cojuangco-Aquino.
Long-term
Ladera however explained that the LUP as a whole is long-term since the entire agricultural land (4,415 hectares out of the original 6,443 hectares) is still under contract for 30 years through the Stock Distribution Option (SDO).
The SDO is a scheme under the CARP that allows the landowner to form a corporate farm and distribute stocks instead of land to tenants.
The scheme has been denounced as an instrument used by landlords and allowed by government to evade CARP.
Hacienda Luisita was formerly owned by the Tarlac Development Corp. (Tadeco). It formed a spin-off corporation, the HLI, in order to operationalize the SDO in 1989. It essentially made the farm beneficiaries part-owners of the corporate farm over 33 percent of its stocks that are supposed to be distributed to more than 5,000 of them within 30 years, the life span of the stock scheme.
In a previous interview with Bulatlat, lawyer Vigor Mendoza, HLI’s vice president for external affairs, in effect, confirmed the farmer beneficiaries’ fears of losing their right to the hacienda when he said that they are to benefit only from the gross sales of the agricultural lands. Once the land is converted to other uses and sold to other companies, the farmer beneficiaries will cease to benefit from it, he said.
Getting ready for the full-blast conversion, several parts of the hacienda have been converted to industrial, commercial, residential and recreational purposes since 1989, for instance: the Luisita Industrial Park 1 (120 has.), the Aqua Farm and Homesite Phases I and II (50 has.), the Luisita Business Park (20 has.), the recently-converted Luisita Industrial Park 2 or the Central Techno Park (500 has.).
Exclusive residential areas include the Family Park Homes Subdivision, the Don Pepe Cojuangco Subdivision (Phases 1-4) and the Las Haciendas Industrial Subdivision. The St. Luis Subdivision is also under development.
Mind setting
Part of the provisions set by the re-classification of the hacienda land is for the Cojuangcos to “establish a vocational training center to provide residents free and affordable means of acquiring technical skills required by prospective investors.”
Councilor Ladera said the owners of the hacienda have established training centers to condition the minds of the farmer beneficiaries and their kin to accept the land use plan. “Their target is to shift them from agricultural to industrial workers,” he said.
However, Ladera belied the Cojuangcos’ claim that the hacienda farmers will be given preferential jobs. While, for instance, the LIP-1 houses 15 medium-industries, only 20 percent of its 6,000-workforce comes from the hacienda.
Plantation workers who are trained into industrial workers cannot expect better opportunities, Ladera also said. Presently, whether as farm workers or industry laborers, the people suffer from low wages and job insecurity.
In fact, he said, the semi-conductors in LIP 1 are starting to retrench regular workers and are hiring casual workers. From 3,500, the number of regular workers at LIP 1 is down to 2,800 at the end of last year with about 1,500 hired as casuals. They have also introduced an early retirement scheme since September last year.
Who’s to gain?
Rene Galang, president of the United Luisita Workers’ Union (ULWU), said in an interview with Bulatlat that plantation workers stand to gain nothing from the land conversion program of Hacienda Luisita.
Although he said their union welcomes the President’s intervention to have the labor dispute solved peacefully, Galang said their union still holds the president accountable for the Nov. 16 massacre of seven strikers, accusing her of colluding with the Cojuangcos to break the strike by force.
Aside from hundreds of policemen from all over Central Luzon, Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas deputized several companies of soldiers from the Tarlac-based Northern Luzon Command to end the strike.
In two recent Senate hearings over the Nov. 16 massacre in Tarlac, opposition Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile said that only the President, as commander in chief, can deputize the military. The senator insisted that the labor secretary’s deputization of the military to effect her assumption of jurisdiction (AJ) order had the blessings of the President. Bulatlat
