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Aside from the much-criticized fat bonuses at a time when the funds’ sustainability was supposedly in danger, thus requiring a hike in members' contributions, it turned out that the SSS executives have each been receiving $1,859 per month just for attending two board meetings, and its CEO flies abroad every two months, first-class.
Contractual employment has come to mean starvation wages, denial of benefits, vulnerability to being laid off, exposure to health and safety hazards, and violations of trade-union rights.
"It is unfortunate that another accident involving a faulty scaffolding happened only three months after the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) published Department Order No. 128-13 amending the rule on scaffolding in the 1989 Occupational Safety and Health Standards.”
Former National Treasurer Leonor Magtolis-Briones estimated that President Aquino’s pork barrel fund amounts to P1.3 trillion ($30 billion), almost half of the proposed national budget of P2.6 trillion ($60 billion).
“We have been told that an increase in the pay of government employees is not possible because of lack of budget. But given the pork barrel scam that implicated many legislators, that may be hard to believe now.” – Courage
“This move by the SSS leadership is not motivated by a concern for members of the SSS who are suffering from meager wages and contractual employment.” – KMU
It is not wages that make doing business difficult for small businessmen, but high power and water rates, trade liberalization and smuggling, and taxes to the government and kickbacks by government officials.” – KMU
'This deadly, destructive war was launched in Aquino's attempt to divert attention away from the pork barrel scandal.'
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.
“They keep saying that it is just there. And that it could be returned to the Development Bank of the Philippines. Why would they return it there and not to the Land Bank of the Philippines? And even if they return it, they still have accountabilities that they need to face.” – National Museum employee
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?
“I was not the one who made you win but your collective action. Without it, it would be difficult to win the case.” -- Atty. Federico Bunao to workers
“The Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce is trying to deceive workers with promises of a better employment situation when the truth is that the country has been pressing down wages for decades but unemployment still continues to grow.” – KMU
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.
“It seems that not even death can force the labor department to speak up against capitalists.” – Joselito Ustarez, KMU vice-chairman
“We are tired of hearing about so-called improvements in the economy when unemployment is increasing, wages are pressed down, prices are soaring, and social services are decaying and getting scarce. This so-called growth is felt not by the needy poor but by the greedy rich.” – Elmer Labog, 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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