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KMU and Ibon research group said the P10 ($0.22) wage hike approved in Metro Manila is puny compared to what the workers' families need to cope with price hikes; to what the wage needs to regain after decades-long erosion; and compared to the growth in labor productivity.
Typhoon Pablo survivors here are opposing the entry of a mining firm owned by the uncle of Pres. Benigno Aquino,III.
Nearly 300 long-time 'casual' workers regain old jobs with fresh resolve to campaign for regularization.
Just like Manila Water and Maynilad, the government and its Metro Rail Transit Corporation is making the public pay its corporate income taxes.
“Why do the military insist that the reasons we are so determined to stop the foreign mining companies are the NPAs, who are supposedly pushing us to do so? Don’t we, lowly people, also have the right to unite to protect our lands?”
Farmers, scientists and advocates believe that golden rice is but a “simplistic, techno-fix solution” to the prevalence of Vitamin A deficiency and there are other sustainable measures that have no negative impact on human health and the environment.
Toxicologist Dr. Romeo Quijano said no safety testing, which includes laboratory feeding studies, has been conducted before the field testing commenced. "Problems have yet to be resolved such as sub-chronic and chronic health effects or allergenicity and toxicity.
See also: Golden rice, not the solution to Vitamin A deficiency
The rate of prevalence of underweight children, with ages zero to five years old, remained unchanged at 20.2 percent in 2005 and 2011. The rate of prevalence of stunted growth increased from 33.1 percent in 2005 to 33.6 percent in 2011. The number of wasting children, also with ages zero to five, increased from 5.8 percent in 2005 to 7.3 percent in 2011.
The Social Security System is profitable. President Aquino even offered a “salute” to it for having increased its membership, its collections and its profitability. Why, workers ask, should it increase workers’ contributions?
"In the Philippines, the limited budgetary allocation for Science and Technology points to a "fragmented strategy at bringing about development."-AGHAM (Advocates of Science and Technology for the People, not the partylist in Congress)
Everywhere, restrictions on workers forming genuine unions have prompted them to do union organizing in an “underground” or clandestine way, at least, at first.
“When workers in Indonesia demand a wage hike, employers threaten them: ‘We would relocate to China.’ In China, employers threaten workers that they would relocate their factory to Vietnam. In Vietnam, employers threaten workers they would relocate to Cambodia. In Cambodia, employers threaten workers that they would relocate to Bangladesh.” – Asia Monitor Resource Center
See also: Indonesian workers battle high prices, low wages despite producing oil, registering growth rates
Asia-Pacific workers wage struggles to turn ‘formal’ rights into reality
The spate of increases is driving Indonesian workers to take to the streets, conduct strikes and file demands for wage increases.
Pamalakaya said the dredging is in preparation for the across-the-lake privatization and conversion of the 90,000-hectare lake.
An international peasant workshop billed “Global Landgrabbing, Genuine Land Reform and Human Rights” concluded that lands in underdeveloped countries are being grabbed, at an alarming rate, by multinational corporations to maximize profits, thereby displacing thousands of communities and denying peasants their right to the land they till.
“Aquino’s grandiose claims of economic growth based on cherry-picked economic indicators fail to hide the economic indicators that matter to ordinary Filipinos. Landlessness is growing; unemployment is rising; wages are being depressed; prices are soaring; and social services are decaying as they become more scarce,” Elmer Labog, chairman of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU).
The Aquino administration’s policies are no different from those that have been increasingly implemented over the last three decades and that have resulted in today's grossly distorted and unequal economy
“The Filipino workers and people are fed up and are protesting against the rising prices and intensifying demolitions. The context is rock-bottom wages and chronic unemployment. That is the real state of the nation.” – Kilusang Mayo Uno
They gather to discuss their experiences and exchange “strategies that work” in upholding their freedom to organize, “amid intensified labor exploitation on a global scale.”
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