Today, on the occasion of the 115th anniversary of the International Labor Day, tens of thousands of workers belonging to the Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) will pour out into the streets of major cities around the country to serve warning to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo: shape up or ship out!
"If this government cannot ensure employment and a living wage for all workers, then it has no business to run this country," Daniel L. Edralin, APL Chairperson said as thousands from APL and other fraternal organizations converged in Welcome Rotonda for the Labor Day celebration.
"Not only is this government insensitive to the plight of the working class but it has even made their lives more miserable!" Edralin said.
The Arroyo administration's continued adherence to neoliberal policies and its unabated graft and corruption has led to growth amidst impoverishment – a deepening unemployment crisis and growing income inequality despite the modest economic growth posed these past few years.
"PGMA seems bent on destroying more and more jobs than it is in creating them as it promised," Edralin added as he lamented the massive loss of jobs that the Arroyo government's irrational "rationalization plan" lead to. At least 30% of the public sector workers are expected to lose their jobs in the next 3 years. Meanwhile its wanton liberalization policies continue to flood the local market with cheap imports killing industries as government bleeds from foregone revenues.
What workers need is living wage and not the crumbs of a minimum wage. But to add insult to injury, PGMA now wants to squeeze to death the working class through a ruthless taxation.
Meanwhile, as the exploitation of the working class intensifies, so does the political repression of its labor movement. The movement's resistance to the continuing "realities" of a globalized world is increasingly met with violent repression. "The imposition of a 'terror bill' and the national ID system can only worsen this repressive situation," Edralin said.
"The APL believes that the only solution is nothing but a complete overhaul of the repressive capitalist system and the workers' establishment of socialism or a social system run by workers that will truly empower them and ensure equitable distribution of wealth," Edralin said. The APL is challenging government to immediately:
- Increase wages to approximate the living wage and abolish the regional wage boards
- Stop implementing the "rationalization plan"
- Increase tariff protection and apply radical solutions to debt crisis such as selective repudiation and the imposition of a cap on debt payments to solve fiscal crisis
- Rescind onerous IPP contracts and amend the EPIRA law to arrest power crisis
- Repeal the Oil Deregulation Law
- Implement reverse privatization of the water services in the NCR without bailing out Maynilad.
- Freeze all privatization initiatives that would lead to unemployment.
- Scrap the national ID system
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