2008 opening salvo: GMA welcomes workers with unemployment, massacre of regular jobs

Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan (PAMANTIK-KMU), the militant labor center in the region, condemns to the highest terms the continued unemployment schemes and massacre of regular jobs orchestrated by capitalists, yellow and opportunist union officers, and facilitated by no less than the government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The news rang on January 7, 2008 the closure of 83-year old Franklin Baker Desiccated Coconut Company operating in San Pablo, Laguna. The closure, which takes full effect by yearend, will displace its more than 1,200 workers, of which 400 are regular and the rest are agency-hired or casual workers.

Most of the workers rendered service to the company for more than 20 years.

The Arroyo administration had long known of the closure plan of Franklin Baker. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, herself, was discussing investment adjustments with business executives and local government officials in the morning of November 29, 2007, at the height of the Manila Peninsula siege.

However, GMA outrightly gave in to the whims of investors. Full of lip service, GMA boasted of providing preventive measures to address the displacement of 1,200 workers which seemed to her an easy thing for the concerned workers to swallow.

For its part, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) will activate its Adjustment Program Measures (APM), as part of Arroyo’s social protection thrust in 2008, to prepare the displaced workers of the company closure. APM will offer trainings, through Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), to the workers for job opportunities in planned call centers, science parks, hotels and restaurants to be established in the district as assured by CEO Robert Chandran of Chemoil, the mother company of Franklin Baker.

The skills of desiccated workers do not suit the government’s employment opportunities.

With this, the government is not addressing the core of the problem in its alarming urgency. Furthermore, DoLE will squeeze the displaced workers to their last centavo as the courses and trainings in TESDA are not free of charge.

These government adjustment schemes are irrational and give no justice to Franklin Baker workers after their long service to the company.

Yellow and opportunist union officers at play in desiccated companies

Some opportunist union officers are instrumental in the Arroyo administration’s massacre of regular jobs.

Teody Lat and Apolonio Boonggaling, president and vice-president, respectively, of the union in Peter Paul Desiccated Company in Candelaria, Quezon collaborated and agreed with the management’s voluntary separation program (VSP). Peter Paul management threatened to close as it claimed business losses with continued operations.

More than 1,300 regular workers were threatened to lose their jobs as Lat and Boonggaling led them to avail the VSP.

After the VSP, Peter Paul did not close. Workers were again absorbed on December 2007. However, the workers were employed as contractual workers by two contracting agencies surprisingly owned by Lat and Boonggaling. Besides that, workers now receive a P252 wage, P16 less of what they used to receive before VSP.

Lat and Boonggaling are affiliated with Partido ng Manggagawa.

Applying the same methods of ‘massacre’ in the already worse conditions

Workers in other desiccated companies such as Primex and Sunripe, mostly in Quezon province, are threatened to lose their employment status with the methods of ‘massacre’ used in Franklin Baker and Peter Paul.

Aside from piece rate and quota system, below minimum wage, no benefits, and inhumane working conditions experienced by workers, companies threaten to exploit them to the fullest possible means by declaring closure while collaborating with opportunist union officers.

More than 7,000 desiccated workers are threatened to lose their jobs by yearend if the workers will allow the “triad of labor exploiters” to prevail in its plan.

The Arroyo administration offers nothing but promises a bleak 2008 for workers in desiccated industry and other industries as well.