Reiterating their Labor Day demands, workers from biggest labor groups in the country marched to Mendiola two days before May 1 to press for significant wage hike.

Led by the Action against Contractualization Towards a Significant Wage Increase Now! (ACT2WIN), workers numbering about 300 sent an “SOS” — “SOS” meaning “Significant wage hike, Overturn contractualization, and Stop trade-union repression”– to Malacanang, to dramatize their labor demands.

Sonny Matula, president of the Federation of Free Workers (FFW), said that workers are not happy with the government’s announcement that no wage hike will be given on Labor Day. “Government officials are thinking of the one-year ban on hiking wages, not the real situation of the country’s workers,” said Matula. FFW is a member of the workers’ alliance ACT2WIN.

The alliance leaders also said they are angry at the continuing spread of contractual employment and called for the immediate scrapping of the labor scheme, aside from repression of workers inside their work.

The group cited the case of Ramil Estolloso, a local FFW leader who was arrested on the charge of frustrated homicide last April 28 and is currently detained in Pagbilao, Quezon.

“We are angered by the continuing spread of contractual employment as well as the repression of workers who are standing up for their rights,” said Matula. He said that the case filed against Estolloso is clearly trumped-up.

“The state is using its machinery against workers who fight for their right and against workers union,” Matula added.
This recent case added up to the more than 30 labor leaders and members from the FFW who are facing criminal cases involving, related to or arising from their union activities.

Also, four members of the national council of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) were also slapped with trumped-up charges.

The militant labor center asserted that the cases against its leaders Ronald Ian Evidente of KMU-Negros, Roy Velez of KMU-NCR, Amelita Gamara of KMU-NCR and Hermenegildo Marasigan of KMU-Southern Tagalog were based on fabricated charges. The cases against their leaders, according to KMU, were clearly meant as attacks on labor leaders fighting for the rights of workers.

On Labor Day, the KMU said it will mobilize at least 30,000 workers to march from Liwasang Bonifacio to Mendiola Bridge near Malacanang.

Speaking in Tagalog, KMU Chair Elmer Labog invited workers to converge in different assembly points like in Blumentrit, Welcome Rotonda, Buendia-Taft and Moriones in Tondo.

Aside from their demand of wage hike and ending contractualization scheme, the group also forwarded a 10-pt Labor Legislative Agenda to all national and local candidates and challenged them to provide concrete and long-term solutions on how to address the workers’ worsening conditions.

Labor leaders said they are directing their 10-point agenda to President Aquino and all candidates in the elective positions. “It is saddening that we do not hear anything about wage hike and ending contractualization from campaigning candidates,” Labog said.

The 10 point  Labor Legislative Agenda is as follows:

1. A significant wage increase, one that will bring current wage levels closer to the living wage;

2. An end to contractualization and the upholding of workers’ security of tenure;

3. The defense of workers’ right to form unions, strikes and collectively bargain;

4. Safer working conditions for the country’s workers by ensuring that standards on occupational health and safety are observed in workplaces;

5. The full provision of social protection to workers and the complete grantingof benefits specified by the law;

6. The generation of decent jobs through the crafting and implementation of a program for national industrialization and genuine land reform;

7. An end to neoliberal policies such as privatization, deregulation and liberalization;

8. An increase in government spending for social service like health, education and housing;

9. The upholding of urban poor’s right to housing and livelihood; and

10. The promotion of  women workers’ rights.

“We are hoping that senatorial and congressional candidates will heed our 10-point agenda,” Labog said.

The group insisted that their fight is not only for the well-being of workers and their families, but the majority of Philippine society.

“It is the country’s workers who work hard to create the wealth that is concentrated in the hands of the elite. We demand a recognition that workers are humans who already suffer from hunger and poverty. (This is not even a demand for) a just share from the products of our labor, but just some form of immediate relief,” said Dave Diwa, president of the National Labor Union (NLU), also an ACT2WIN member.

The group also expressed sympathy and solidarity with the families of the more than 370 Bangladeshi workers who died when a nine-storey building hosting a garments factory collapsed last April 24 in the country’s capital Dhaka.