Bagong landas ng social reform di lang tuwid na daan ng good governance

Press Statement

July 23, 2011

Gerry Rivera

President, PALEA

Vice Chair, PM

Hiling ng mga manggagawa kay PNoy sa SONA:

Bagong landas ng social reform di lang tuwid na daan ng good governance

In his SONA, President Benigno Aquino will likely highlight his administration’s accomplishments in stamping corruption. But workers believe that poverty will not be solved by good governance alone. Poverty can only be eradicated by reforms in the economic and social arena that attacks the iniquitous distribution of wealth in the country.

After one year of PNoy, there is no new program to generate jobs, no new mechanism to increase workers wages and no change in the no-union policy in the ecozones. PNoy has given the go signal for contractualization at Philippine Airlines. He has praised Hanjin’s investments but has been silent on the deaths and injuries of workers at the shipyard-cum-graveyard. PNoy has continued with sacrificing labor rights at the ecozones to attract foreign capital.

In Philippine Airlines, the Office of the President has allowed management to outsource 2,600 jobs even as it suppressed the right of the union to fight through an assumption of jurisdiction order. In the Hanjin shipyard, another worker has died last Wednesday, adding to the 31 previous deaths. In the Mactan Economic Zone, after three decades a union finally won a certification election only for the Japanese company to shutdown operations in order to bust the union then reopen last week via a permit from the Philippine Economic Zone Authority.

Kung ganito sa unang taon ni PNoy, paano na sa susunod pang limang taon?

Despite the absence of wang-wangs, despite the resignation of Merci Gutierrez and despite the initiative to prosecute GMA for plundering the country, it is undeniable that the number of poor and hungry Filipinos has remained the same if not worsened. And it is because there is not social reform being implemented under the PNoy administration despite the so-called social contract with the people.

The contents of the PNoy’s Philippine Development Plan are hardly different from GMA’s Medium Term Philippine Development Plan. PNoy’s Public-Private Partnership is simply privatization by just another name. Privatization has being tried by Cory, FVR, Erap and GMA. And it has been exposed as the root of the high prices of power, electricity and water, and of excessive toll fees among others.

Ipinapaabot ng mga manggagawa kay PNoy: ang gusto ng kanyang mga boss ay bagong landas di lang tuwid na daan. Ang kailangan ng taumbayan ay di lang good governance kundi higit sa lahat social reform.