Arroyo is biggest job annihilator - KMU

(Last of a series)

Contrary to what Gloria Arroyo promised in her ten-point legacy which includes ten million jobs, vast scarcity of employment opportunities and job closures stand as the striking truth about her bad employment record, according to labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno.

Apart from falling short of her target, Arroyo has made livelihood of Filipino families more unstable by dangling low-quality and temporary jobs, including her “Pulis Oyster” employment scheme for out-of-school youth.

"Gloria Arroyo promised to generate 1 million jobs yearly when she assumed presidency. After nine years, what swept us was a vast scarcity of employment opportunities and the annihilation of countless jobs and livelihood," KMU said.

No jobs
Currently, 4.2 million in our labor force do not have any job at all, and more than 4 million Filipinos are always unemployed yearly. Worse, the US-Arroyo regime redefined unemployment figures in April 2005 in a desperate attempt to cover up the massive loss of jobs.

At that time, it slashed 1.9 million from the actual 4.8 million unemployed Filipinos. Furthermore, those who do not have work and not looking for work anymore were slashed from the labor force, hence from employment figures.

As part of her so-called vision to promote the Philippines into a globally competitive country, Arroyo has always protected the profits of big business, not the security of the workers’ livelihood.

Displaced from jobs
With the onslaught of the global financial crisis, the regime was even more protective of the interests of the capitalists as it allowed the massive retrenchment of workers.

DOLE itself estimated at the start of the year that 200,000 could lose their jobs for the first half of 2009. Going into the second half of the year, more cases of retrenchment are reported, including the closure of Triumph International and Goodyear.

The validity of such retrenchments were not ever been subjected to scrutiny, as actually, big companies continue to rake in more profit amid the crisis.

Is this what you call job?

The regime even pushed companies to implement flexible labor measures to supposedly “cope” with the crisis and “avoid” lay offs. DOLE Advisory No. 2 was issued last Jan.30 after a “tri-partite” conference where KMU was never. It legitimized the reduction of work hours, forced leaves, overtime work without pay, voluntary retirement, and other schemes that entirely destroys the right to job security.

The regime also always boasted its job fairs that have been flocked by an increasing number of unemployed Filipinos, already a stark contradiction in itself as the queue of jobless grows longer instead of otherwise.

Meanwhile, the independent think-tank IBON foundation revealed that 1.3 million out of the 1.5 million jobs created last year are non-earning, poorly earning or otherwise insecure jobs. Currently, 14.3 million or almost half of those employed are working part-time only. ###