If GMA wants a Truth Commission, she should begin with the truth about workers

July 21, 2005
As we await the State of the Nation Address amid the most tumultuous period in Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's reign, workers expect nothing but more of the same from the beleaguered President. For four years this sector has borne the brunt of her anti-people policies, her neo-liberal prescriptions of deregulation, liberalization and rationalization, which have brought workers more and more misery.

Her floating of a Truth Commission is nothing more than an attempt to whitewash her culpability for so many crimes against the people. More importantly, a Truth Commission will not solve the problem that is GMA's lack of credibility and proven incompetence.

For sure GMA will be brandishing her government's job creation program as one sure way by which the economy is withstanding the political turmoil surrounding her administration. The Secretary of Labor has already gone on record to say that as of July this year more than half a million jobs have already been generated. But what this declaration hides is that it is a far cry from what is needed to quickly bring down the record-high number of jobless Filipinos. And it is well below the number of jobs created in previous quarters, pointing to a slowdown in employment generation.

It also hides the the fact that aside from the telecommunications sector providing the boost for this growth courtesy of call centers, an even bigger number of jobs are being destroyed – from union-busting to retrenchment to contractualization. The government's "Rationalization Plan" alone intends to shed off 30% of the public sector workers.

Even if jobs were created in 2004, one has to wonder how government will still be able to keep generating them under such unfavorable political conditions, given recent credit downgrades from financial institutions and skepticism from creditors such as the Asian Development Bank. GMA is the problem right now, and her continued stay in Malacañang only makes life harder for millions of workers with each day passing.

Studies reveal that wage levels around the country have proven inadequate to meet the rising cost of living. Based on APL computations, the minimum wage rate is not enough to meet the daily poverty threshold necessary to provide families with enough resources to put three square meals on the table every day. Calls for a legislated, nationwide and across-the-board salary increase were instead channeled through incompetent regional wage boards, which labor has insisted time and again should be abolished for creating wage distortions across regions.

If these are the conditions under which workers have to toil, then imagine how much our rights have been eroded by the government's continued ignorance of our concerns. Up to this day labor cases continue to languish at the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) with no promise of resolutions. Labor leaders are being executed with no suspects being brought to justice, unions are being violently dispersed and dismantled by management, and various pro-Labor bills in Congress have been met with indifference with no support from the government, much less the President who is more concerned with keeping big business and capitalists happy and supportive of her crumbling administration.

This is the truth about workers. This is the truth that GMA's expected SONA will not address. GMA's overriding concern for political survival naturally puts workers' interests at the backburner, and the immediate need is to oust her to afford workers enough breathing room to assert our interests.

But the Alliance of Progressive Labor is only too well aware that GMA is a symptom, and the disease is the very system that spawned her. The APL demands nothing less than an overhaul of the system that has given GMA and her ilk the dominance that enables them to trample on workers' rights. Her resignation will not solve the problems of this country, and mere constitutional succession will not undo the innumerable damage GMA has inflicted on the economy and the political life of this nation.

The Alliance of Progressive Labor, together with the National Transport Workers' Union (NTU) will hold protest actions raging from massive mobilizations to transport strikes on Monday, July 25, 2005, in support of the call of Solidarity of Unions and Labor Organizations for a New Government (SULONG) to hold a national day of paralysis to show worker's disgust with GMA and the system that continues to oppress workers everywhere. Nothing less than GMA's ouster will suffice for workers everywhere. The message on her SONA is clear: it is high time for Gloria to go.