COMMENTARY
GMA’s Scam Against Workers

Foreign companies are asking the government “to do away with workers’ security of tenure and recognize the management’s right to hire and fire.” What they want is carte blanche authority to do pretty much whatever they want with their Filipino workers. Like that vampire child in Interview with the Vampire, they want more -- more blood, that is, of the Filipino worker.

By Carlos H. Conde
Bulatlat.com

President Arroyo’s labeling of trade unionists as terrorists is a veritable directive for the police and the military to go after them. Crushing unionism is part of Big Business’s plan to earn more profits at the expense of workers’ rights and welfare. Some may scoff at these arguments as mere leftist rhetoric but, in fact, Big Business has never made secret its desire to achieve a state of slavery in the Third World.

In a report by BusinessWorld this week, the eight-member Joint Foreign Chambers in the Philippines (JFCP) has urged the government, through the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC), to forget about workers’ rights and welfare because these are impediments to foreign investments.

The JFCP specifically wants the government to expand its list of industries classified as under “national interest.” Any labor dispute within these industries would then automatically be assumed by the NLRC, whose leaders have virtually promised the JFCP in their meeting recently in Manila that they would be protecting their interests, not the workers. (That, of course, is nothing new.)

BusinessWorld reported that during that meeting with the NLRC, the JFCP asked the government “to do away with workers’ security of tenure and recognize the management’s right to hire and fire.” What these foreign companies want is carte blanche authority to do pretty much whatever they want with their Filipino workers.

As it is, our labor laws protect more the interest of employers than the workers, who are being abused with impunity. Their health and insurance benefits are withheld. Their wages are not being increased because the government thinks that would shoo investors away. Their security of tenure is not at all, well, secure. Their rights to unionize and to collectively bargain are being assaulted endlessly. Contractualization is so massive that workers end up counting their blessings if they happened to get employed for six months in a year.

But Big Business, particularly foreign companies, is not content with all this. Like that child in Interview With the Vampire, they want more. More blood, that is, of the Filipino worker.

The sorry state of Philippine labor, in which the unemployment rate is rising every year, is the result of the structural adjustment programs that the capitalist countries, particularly the U.S., have implemented in the country. These programs liberalized the Philippine economy, deregulated and privatized industries and utilities. These, in turn, have resulted in massive layoffs and displacements, so that now we have more unemployed Filipinos than ever before. These same programs are the ones implemented in Argentina, Uruguay and other Third World countries – countries whose economies have collapsed.

In short, not only did foreign investors want control of companies – they also do not want to reduce their profits by giving benefits and all that to their workers. This should make us wonder then to whose benefits these foreign investments are, when obviously they are not for the workers who comprise the bulk of the population in the urban areas.

Not content with all this, these greedy foreigners now want the Arroyo regime to give them more. Of course, Arroyo is more than happy to oblige. She is, after all, the proponent of these programs in the Senate. And the only way she can give in to the whims and wishes of her foreign masters is to practically annihilate workers by depriving them of their rights.

This is the context of her directive for the government to go down hard against the so-called terrorists in trade unions. The plan is simple: make trade unionists out as enemies of the state. That would make it much easier to target them so that they would leave employers to their own devices. Her foreign masters, who will reap a windfall out of this policy, should be immensely proud of her.

When you really think about it, all this is nothing but a scam. Bulatlat.com

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