Cheap labor, cheap lives on sale in Aquino’s US trip

While the Aquino government proudly proclaims that the president’s first trip to the US will cost less than his predecessor’s overseas trips, we maintain that its effects will cost so much for the Filipino workers and people. It is clear from Noynoy’s statements, entourage, and itinerary that he will be selling cheap Filipino labor and cheap Filipino lives to US corporations and in this trip.

Claiming that the trip will create more jobs in the country, Noynoy said that he will “try to make the country even more attractive” to foreign investors. Previous governments have also done this, yet we have always ended up with the same results: chronic unemployment, low wages, contractual work, and violations of trade-union rights. A change in the country’s plight lies right here in the country, not abroad – in junking long-standing neoliberal policies that favor foreign and big local corporations.

It is clear from the Aquino government’s mendicant attitude towards the US that Noynoy’s trip will affirm, and even expand, the highly-unequal Visiting Forces Agreement. While the cost of Noynoy’s short trip to the US may be cheap – and it should be cheaper, since most of the businessmen and politicians in his entourage can pay for their trips, anyway – the cost of the permanent stay of US troops in the country has been running sky-high for the Filipino people. Our Constitution, sovereignty and laws have been trampled upon and our people’s safety and rights have been violated by the VFA.

Noynoy’s US trip may have been scheduled by the government in the aftermath of its disastrous handling of the bloody August 23 hostage crisis, in an effort to recoup lost “political capital.” The Aquino government’s continuing subservience to the US, however, will erode its “political capital” quickly and more dramatically in the long run than any hostage crisis or any such crisis. A government that treats its labor and people cheap will surely and in no time lose much-valued “political capital” among the Filipino workers and people. #