Workers demand GMA and K4 platform for full employment!

Workers from the Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) trooped to the K4 national campaign headquarters in Makati this morning to press GMA and all the other K4 candidates to bare their platform for full regular employment.

The APL has been calling on all presidential candidates to close their programs on how to ensure full regular employment for all workers. "Up to now, all we hear are more of the same promises to generate jobs. But what kind of jobs are they promising and how do they intend to generate these jobs? These are the questions we want to be answered by all presidential candidates," Daniel L. Edralin, APL chairperson said.

"We are aware that GMA is promising a million new jobs a year," Edralin said, "that is simply not enough as there are at least 1.5 million new job seekers every year.” He added that jobs created by GMA during her term are mostly marginal, low paying and temporary. "What we want are decent jobs for everyone. This means regular, productive and remunerable jobs. Not the kind of emergency jobs that GMA is currently promoting in aid of her reelection!" Edralin added.

At the start of the year APL raised the issue of worsening job crisis as unemployment rate continued to increase from 11.2 percent in 2002 to 11.4 percent in 2003 despite the fact that the economy grew by 5 percent last year. According to government statistics, there are now close to 4 million jobless Filipinos. Another 5.5 million workers are underemployed, that is, employed but wanting more hours of work. And still, another 3 million people of working age have no jobs as its population grew by 1.7 million every year.

The GMA administration has been in power for three years but has miserably failed in solving unemployment due to its continued adherence to an economic model based on liberalization, deregulation and privatization. Unrestricted importation without a strong economic infrastructure has not only prevented job growth but had led to grave job loses to tens of thousands of workers.

Full regular employment for everyone is possible. But it can never be attained unless government shifts away from its flawed neo-liberal policies.

As expected, the group was dismayed with the non-appearance of K4’s national candidates. K4 representatives who met the group could not present a credible employment program.

The absence of full employment in K4's platform is a manifestation of a lack of political will, or of imagination, or both, to address the burgeoning employment crisis! This would only mean that, in the event that she wins the elections, workers can expect nothing but more of the same problems that they are now suffering from.