LABOR WATCH
Mayhem in Labor Chief’s Power
Workers say ‘assumption of jurisdiction’ is anti-labor

The labor secretary’s “assumption of jurisdiction” power is being used to ban all strikes and has caused bloodshed in the workers front. This is like reliving martial law, militant labor unions say.

By Dennis Espada
Bulatlat 

Is the labor department running a reign of terror at strike sites?

This question is being asked on the workers front amid the rising incidence of labor strikes that are violently broken up by police and military forces on orders of Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas. Because of this, several workers have died, scores injured and several other strikers arrested in recent months.

Exercising her assumption of jurisdiction (AJ) powers, Sto. Tomas ordered the intervention of police and military forces mid-November to break up the strike staged by some 6,000 plantation and sugar mill workers at Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac north of Manila. The result: the violent dispersal of the picketlines resulting in the massacre of at least seven striking workers on Nov. 16.

Last week, labor groups from Southern Tagalog took turns denouncing the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) saying that AJ orders bring more hostility and misery to workers.

Leaders of the Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan-Kilusang Mayo Uno (Pamantik-KMU or united workers in Southern Tagalog – May First Movement) said the AJ order deputizes the military and police forces to brutally disperse workers' pickets.

Citing similarities with the Hacienda Luisita case, Pamantik leaders cited the violent dispersal of strikes at Nestle, Nissan Motors, Soutech, Jac Liner, Tritran Bus and other companies in Southern Tagalog. The dispersal operations were apparently triggered by DoLE’s AJ orders and the police-military intervention.

Assault on women workers

Two weeks after the Luisita massacre on Nov. 30, a combined force of the military's Special Warfare Action Group (SWAG), the local Philippine National Police (PNP) and security guards armed with truncheons and other weapons broke up the picketline of some 80 women striking workers of Sun Ever Lights Philippines at the Laguna Technopark in Sta. Rosa, Laguna. Reports said some of the striking workers were beaten up with truncheons, lassoed, their hair strangled and sexually-molested during the assault.

Luz Baculo, secretary general of Pamantik, told Bulatlat that human rights volunteers negotiated with the police that the striking workers be given food and those wounded given first aid treatment, but the police chief refused.

Sun Ever is Japanese-owned.

Baculo also accused Sto. Tomas of abusing her powers so as to favor company employers. The labor secretary has been asked by some senators and several sectors to resign in the light of her role in the Hacienda Luisita massacre. She has ignored the clamor. 

Art. 263 (g) of the Labor Code states that the DoLE secretary shall have the power to assume jurisdiction in all industrial strikes considered as "indispensable to the national interest."

Labor unions on the other hand describe the AJ power as repressive and as being open to abuse by DoLE. For that matter, “national interest” is so vague but it has been cited as basis for the AJ in all types of labor strikes.

The Code thus implies that once the order is issued, a strike can be declared illegal. Workers going on strike are then compelled to return to their workplaces; failing to comply would mean job termination. 

Diosdado Fortuna, leader of Nestle Philippines' labor union and chairman of the National Coalition for the Protection of Worker's Rights in Southern Tagalog (NCPWR-ST), says that the AJ became part of the Labor Code as “a tool to ban the worker's right to strike."

Fortuna recalled that in 1972, the regime of Ferdinand Marcos imposed a total ban of all strikes and public demonstrations under his General Order No. 5. 

"We should not be cowed by repression and violence,” Fortuna says. “Look at the Nestle workers’ experience. Strikers defied the AJ order because they believe government should uphold the Supreme Court's decision declaring the retirement plan as a legitimate issue in the negotiations. This is already part of our legal jurisprudence which the DoLE must follow.” 

Profits boom but worker's pay slips 

One cause of many labor strikers is the freezing of wages, a company policy supported by the government. Yet corporate profit is reportedly increasing. Last week, newspapers cited reports by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) that the export earnings of companies in economic zones have reached $25.6 billion in the first 10 months of 2004, a 14 percent increase compared to $22.49 billion in the same period last year. 

Among all economic zones, the Laguna Technopark in Southern Tagalog remains the single leading export performer with $6.51 billion. There are more than 50 private and government-run economic zones within Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon). 

Government authorities claim that employment in the region rose by 11.2 percent. Just the same, contractual workers continue to outnumber the regulars with 399,000 direct hired and 598,000 indirectly employed. The contractual workers have neither social benefits nor job security. 

Even the Wage Order No. 9 implemented last November by the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board in Region IV-A (RTWPB) has earned ire rather than relief among crisis-stricken workers. In fact, RTWPB's "reclassification" of municipalities and cities has spurred wage reduction in many areas.

Lower than basic pay

For instance, in General Mariano Alvarez town in Cavite, workers now receive less than P40 in their basic pay. Workers in the towns of Carmona, Rosario, General Trias, Dasmarinas and Cavite City which were classified in past wage orders as Extended Metropolitan Area will only get an additional P12 instead of P18 due to reclassification of these as Growth Corridor Area. 

Only Imus and Bacoor towns, along with San Pedro and Biñan in Laguna remain classified as Extended Metropolitan Area that will avail of the P255 new minimum wage.

Highly suspicious 

In a statement, the Solidarity of Cavite Workers (SCW) assailed the latest wage order as "highly suspicious, anomalous and deceptive." 

SCW chairperson Marlene Gonzales said: "While Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's cabinet members and hatchet men in government-owned corporations are excessively living in abundance from the people's money and are even protected for their corruption, workers’ welfare are left behind to bear the brunt of her economic and political mismanagement. Sooner, the lowly-paid workers will cry out loud in unison: Madam, no more noodles on our table!" 

Seeing the inutility of the RTWPB, NCPWR-ST's Fortuna stressed that what the country urgently needs is a legislated wage increase of P125 across the country. Bulatlat

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