Press Release
February 11, 2015
A strike broke out today at a Korean-owned metal factory
inside the Cavite Economic Zone, the biggest in the country, due to a dispute
over wage increases during collective bargaining negotiations. The militant
Partido Manggagawa (PM) explained that the dispute exposes the bankruptcy of
the two-tiered wage system being implemented in Calabarzon for the past few
years.
“The two-tiered
system pioneered in Calabarzon sets a very low floor wage—the new name for the minimum
wage—and only productivity-based schemes allow workers to receive above the
floor wage. But at Tae Sung and other export zone factories, despite yearly
profits, capitalists refuse to share productivity gains to its workers. Thus
most Tae Sung workers earn no more than the floor wage despite their company supplying
metal parts to big electronics and auto multinationals like American Power
Conversion, Honda, Caterpillar, Mitsubishi, Siemens and Deif of Denmark,”
argued Wilson Fortaleza, PM national spokesperson.
Production at
Tae Sung is now paralyzed as all regular workers for the 6:00 a.m. morning
shift are now picketing company gates. Tae
Sung's human resource manager has talked to the picketing workers and she was
told that only a collective bargaining agreement will make them go back to work.
Fortaleza added that “How can a
two-tiered wage system work—in which productivity-based pay are dependent on
negotiations—when the vast majority of workers are unorganized and the few
unionized are disadvantaged by weak enforcement of labor laws and the willing connivance
of government officials—from the Labor Department to the local government units—with
foreign and local capitalists? No wonder inclusive growth remains elusive and instead
inequalities prosper despite the much-vaunted economic growth that is
monopolized by big capitalists.”
The
Tae Sung Employees Association, the union at the Korean factory, alleges that
the company has been engaged in bad faith bargaining for the past seven months
of negotiations. The union has reduced its wage demand from P100 each year for
three years to P25 in a bid to reach an agreement but the Tae Sung management
has barely moved from insisting on no increases to offering merely P5 each year
for three years. Aside from wages, almost all provisions in the union contract proposal
have been rejected by Tae Sung. Since 2011, Tae Sung has been earning annually more
than USD 10 million, according to the union.
Aside from being hardline in negotiations, the union claims
that Tae Sung is attempting to weaken the union by firing eight union members,
including one union officer, and suspending others including the union
president and vice president.
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