P125 wage hike auspicious in 2008 - KMU

Now on its 8th year

Even militant Kilusang Mayo Uno took time to greet everyone a resounding Kung Hei Fat Choi. KMU Chairperson Elmer “Ka Bong” Labog shared that he hopes the Year of the Earth Rat won’t be another “mahirap pa sa daga” year for the workers, their families and the majority of Filipinos in general. 

“Despite the statistics telling us of worse things to come— the rise in income being at its lowest under the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime, the prices and unemployment at its highest— we are Pinoys, we are optimistic, hardworking and we hope for the best,” elaborated Labog. He urged all workers to join their activities for 2008.

He said that if feng shui masters are right, then there are reasons to hope that inspite of the impending US recession, the Arroyo government might just “feel it in their heart by sincerely listening to us to finally give the Filipino workers a bit of their due.” Mr Labog was talking of labor’s P125 across-the-board wage hike demand, which he said seems to be in for a more auspicious trajectory this year.

The Filipino labor movement’s P125 wage hike demand will enter its 8th year this year; eight is considered auspicious. On top of that, its 8th year will be on the Year of the Earth Rat, a year said to be of renewal or change. “We hope the Arroyo government and the business sector in the Philippines will have a changed perspective, a renewed sense of fairness, for instance,” said Labog. “We hope the authorities will drop their knee-jerk reactions against the workers’ wage demand, and see that that the Filipino workers’s P125 across the board wage hike demand is actually miniscule compared to the mega-profits the workers have been bringing in to their coffers all these years,” said Bong Labog. He claims that the bulk of the gains from the 7.3% touted growth of the Arroyo government, if it is true in the first place,  have gone to just a few super-rich Filipino landlords and businessmen and to foreign investors who remit some of their profits to their home countries or plow it back here in expanded businesses.

Labog said that in 2008, he hopes the employers’ group will no longer hide their greed under their supposed concern for small and medium enterprises who are usually exempted in wage increases anyway. “We all know that medium and large companies are profiting heavily from the labors of the workers. We can see their glowing year-end profit reports, or their expansions into similar or other businesses” said Labog.

Labog urged  Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to signify as urgent the bill in Congress for a P125 across the board wage hike. He said that  this will give a message that they meant it when they said they’ll try their best to make the “economic boom” felt by many, or that they’re serious when they talk of giving the Filipinos an economic “stimulus.”

Labog observed that many Filipinos whether or not they have direct Chinese ancestry have taken to feng shui which, for one, advocates letting chi to flow freely into the people’s lives, relationships and homes. “Curiously, the Arroyo government and the business sector in the Philippines are blocking the nation’s chi everytime they block the workers’ just wage hike demand,” said Bong Labog.

He said even daft economists would tell you that giving people more cash will stimulate the economy. But in the case of the Filipino workers’ P125 wage hike demand, Labog said it’s not like they are asking for other people’s money. “That amount represents a small sum from the whole profit that the workers are continuously creating. We’re not asking for the business sectors’ money, but for a bit of the workers’ money which the businessmen are pocketing for their own,” Labog stressed. He adds that even feng shui advocates give-and-take.

He added that it struck him how purveyors of feng shui such as Tess Allen of World of Feng Shui, who probably doesn’t do political economy, still arrived at this advise to Filipinos if they wish to be prosperous: “take some money from a rich man’s wallet.”

Labog said that in the Philippines’ highly unequal distribution of gains from the labors of the “anakpawis (toiling masses),” taking “money from rich people’s wallet” for redistribution, even in the form of a scanty wage hike such as the labor’s P125 wage hike demand and the government employee’s P3,000 demand, should be a top priority.