Graveyard shift amid daytime brownouts hell for workers – KMU

Gloria Arroyo wants workers in Mindanao to literally experience hell through her order to schedule manufacturing activities at night while maintaining daytime rotating brownouts that last up to eight to ten hours, labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno said today.

Arroyo’s order urging manufacturing companies and workers based in Mindanao to operate during “off-peak period” from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. came out after she declared entire Mindanao under state of calamity last week.

“Even call center agents complain about enduring graveyard shifts. Worse, Arroyo wants workers in Mindanao to sleep amid on-and-off electricity and searing heat during daytime. How can workers have an easy sleep in that situation?” said KMU chairperson Elmer “Bong” Labog.

“The government is not trying to ease the power crisis. It is just proposing stop-gap measures to while away time, hoping that things will be better in the coming months. What the government should do at the very least is stop bidding out more hydropower plants to foreign corporations,” he added.

Labog also warned Mindanao-based companies against using the current rotating brownouts to lay off workers.

“Companies should not make workers suffer doubly from retrenchment and from power outages in the region. Instead, they should pressure the Arroyo government to craft swift and viable solutions to the power crisis instead of issuing onerous declarations,” he said.

“In an effort to make up for her regime’s criminal neglect of the country’s critical power needs, Arroyo forces workers to accept an added sacrifice. Again, she makes the people suffer for her bad privatization policies, this time in the power sector,” he added.

Labog said the government’s sellout of fuel-based plants and renewable energy plants to foreign corporations in previous years have left the country with very minimal sources of power at a time when the latter is much needed. He also said that the government has foreseen El Niño last year, yet it has only dilly-dallied in taking measures.