A coalition of 49 labor centers, federations and workers’
organizations to promote workers’ interest, the Nagkaisa today issued a
statement to give labor groups’ perspective on the fifth State of the
Nation Address (SONA) of President Benigno Simeon Aquino III tomorrow,
Monday, July 28th. Below is the coalition’s pre-SONA statement:
“Millions of Filipino workers and their families remains deprived of
the benefits of the inclusive growth they deserve from the so-called
high Philippine economic growth they helped built since 2010. It is
shameful that the President in Benigno Simeon Aquino III they elected in
power four years ago, has tactfully failed them.
With around 700 days left in office, there are bold indications that
the man in Pnoythey thought could lead them out of vicious pit of
poverty and help them cope with the rising prices of commodities caused
by a liberalizing economy is, in fact, slowly abandoning the hope of the
working people.
Siding with employers’ interest, President Aquino deliberately
refused to break the cycle of poverty by freeing up a large segment of
25 million contractual workers when he turned down outright the Nagkaisa
plead to certify the pending Security of Tenure (SOT) bill designed to
responsibly eliminate the very backward contractualization work scheme
imposed by the business elites.
Aquino is just staring at workers being mangled by a very exorbitant
and world class electricity rates controlled by a monopsony cartel of a
very few families despite persistent advice from Nagkaisa to act, form
and lead a multi-agency, multi-sectoral task force that will figure out
within two-year period a secure power supply and a competitive
electricity rate.
The stakes just get higher with the ominous crisis in power supply.The
hiatus is so real that it would reckon businesses to make significant
retrenchments of workers and render the country uncompetitive and
unattractive to investments that are necessary to create more new jobs.
The absence of a national strategic plan on power will surely force
the state to make knee-jerk but expensive fixes that, in the end,
workers, especially minimum wage earners, would have to pay more from
their take home pay—reminiscent of the same blunder committed by his
mother the late President Cory Aquino.
Aquino is doing nothing while watching workers profusely bleed from
the day-to-day stab of recent man-made and phenomenal sudden price
increase of rice, garlic and ginger.
Without any significant increase in wages amid hikes in prices and
costs of other basic commodities and services during his tenure, he has,
in fact,coldly insulted the workers by issuing an executive order that
would raise by P10,000 the disability and burial benefits of workers the
moment concerned government agencies accrue excess funds.
He has reneged on his promise to “get back” a month later with
presidential response on important laborp olicy issues raised by
Nagkaisa labor leaders he invited to a pre-labor day breakfast dialogue
inside Malacanang Palace on April 30th.
In the light of the controversial discovery of the Disbursement
Allocation Program DAP), Mr. Aquino and cohorts should account for every
single centavo in the billions of pesos of workers’ money in the scheme.The
Nagkaisa demand Mr. Aquino to prove that the people’s money was not
siphoned off to ghost projects and illusory expenditures as payoff for
political patronage.
Mr. Aquino has squandered all opportunities to make a difference in
the lives of workers especially those of the rank-and-file. He has
failed to commiserate with the warm bodies that broke their back in
earning a living while building the economy. The Nagkaisa has performed
its critical part in bringing the case to the table. Now, it cannot
entirely put the blame on workers who will claim their piece of social
justice on the streets.
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