Partido Manggagawa Advocates State Takeover of National Grid Operations Amidst Controversial MIC Investment Proposal

 

Photo from Business World

In a recent press release, Partido Manggagawa (PM) reiterates its call for the government to reassume control of the national grid, countering the suggested state investment in the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) through the Maharlika Investment Corporation (MIC), as proposed by House Speaker Martin Romualdez.

 

PM underscores its opposition to the MIC proposal, expressing concern over the diversion of public funds to support what it deems an unsound investment proposal. "We have consistently opposed the creation of MIC, and witnessing public funds being diverted to support an unsound investment proposal only strengthens our opposition," emphasized PM.

 

The group argues that reclaiming control of the national grid operations is the most appropriate alternative, as investing public funds into NGCP through MIC, owned by the country's wealthiest family and supported by Chinese state capital, is totally unnecessary.

 

PM urges the government to take back the national grid operations, highlighting the historical success of the state's management of the grid before its privatization in 2008. The national grid was then considered a 'crown jewel' among Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations (GOCCs), generating an annual net income of at least ₱20 billion.

 

"Today, it is the NGCP, rather than the state, that accumulates wealth, as revealed in previous Senate investigations. NGCP's financial statements indicate a total comprehensive income of ₱306.77 billion in 14 years, with ₱238.84 billion distributed as dividends to shareholders," lamented PM.

 

According to the labor group, the real issue facing NGCP is performance, not a lack of cash. PM contends that pouring more money into NGCP through MIC is unwise and would divert crucial resources from other essential programs.

 

The group likewise suggests that instead of investing further in NGCP, the government should rather consider imposing a wealth tax on windfall profits of power oligarchs to address the government’s own fiscal problems.

 

"NGCP’s problem is performance, not lack of cash. It is the government, on the contrary, which needs more funds; thus, it should also consider imposing a wealth tax against the windfall profits of power oligarchs," concluded PM.

FOR IMMEDIATE 

08 January 2024

Living wage, freedom of association asserted on celebration of Human Rights Day

 

Demand for living wage and freedom of association highlight workers’ participation in the Human Rights Day protest held in Manila, Saturday.

 

The Partido Manggawa (PM), said 74 years after the International Declaration of Human Rights and yet living a life of dignity and improvements in peoples’ standard of living that were desired under that declaration remain wanting.

 

“This is because in many states, including the Philippines, these aspirations remain a scrap of paper. And with civil and political rights, including the right to form unions, to bargain and even to strike are highly constrained, achieving living wage and rising standard of living as provided under the Constitution were never achieved,” said PM Secretary General Judy Miranda.

 

PM Joined the human rights community led by PAHRA and iDEFEND in a caravan and march to Mendiola this morning.

 

Miranda lamented that without a Labor Agenda to stand with, the Marcos administration will just be another sad episode in the country’s lack of compliance to international commitments on human rights.

 

Living wage, according to Miranda, “is the only way to achieve a golden age as the current poverty wages consigned workers to poverty even if their productivity has increased many folds during the last three decades.”

 

PM accompanied the Kapatiran ng mga Unyon at Samahang Manggagawa (KAPATIRAN) last Monday in filing a P100 wage increase for wage recovery (WinWar) petition at the NCR Regional Wage Board. Similar petitions will be filed in other regions in the next few days as inflation continues to soar.

 

PM also wants Congress to abolish the regional wage boards in favor of a national wage commission to reform the country’s wage fixing mechanisms that fail to bring wages nearer the living wage as mandated by the Constitution.

 

“The Maharlika bill should be scrapped in favor of the workers agenda such as wage hikes and wage reforms, ending endo, and the creation of strong public employment programs,” referring to the controversial Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) that Congress is pushing, said Miranda.

 

The group said the sovereign wealth fund can only be sustained by wealth tax as the public sector runs on deficit and the real surplus is at the hands of the wealthiest businessmen.

Photos of the December 10 Human Rights Celebration can be accessed here: https://www.facebook.com/partidomanggagawa/posts/pfbid02LoqtmQCgWeYDQ4bq1ihGfRhpBYAiHCMwEmAEpEfxi8Q1tJzEu7AWPhPyNhSgJMoJl

Partido Manggagawa

10 December 2022

Partido Manggagawa welcomes SSS and GSIS exclusion from MIF, seeks GFI’s accountability

The Partido Manggagawa (PM) welcomes the decision of the House panel to spare SSS and GSIS from Maharlika’s sources of fund.

But the group maintains that the decision does not absolve Congress as well as the executives of the two pension funds from accountability.  

PM said members’ vigilance and strong opposition were key for this reversal, and thus, should be sustained to prevent future attempts at misappropriating workers’ funds.

“The mere fact that Congress toyed with the idea of creating a wealth fund out of our pension funds is already a red flag. But more reprehensible was the reckless approval of the SSS and GSIS executives to divert funds into the MIF without consulting the fund owners – the Filipino working class,” said PM Secretary General.

To prevent a repeat of this attempt for fund diversion, the group proposes that a mechanism for consultation - in the minimum regular dialogue with labor groups and in the maximum, a referendum for members - be instituted in the SSS and GSIS manual or system of operations.

Miranda explained that fund members were truly disgusted with SSS’ decision because an 11-15% increase in premiums was imposed beginning 2018 on the pretexts that the fund’s life was deteriorating, and members’ benefits need to be enhanced.  

Women workers expressed this reservation as Miranda recalled, during the public hearings on the 105-Day Expanded Maternity Leave, the SSS claimed the EML can only be funded by an increase in premiums. “But now we’ve got a surplus for Maharlika,” lamented Miranda.

Earlier, the Nagkaisa Labor coalition where PM is affiliated, countered that a wealth tax is the better source of the sovereign wealth fund (SWF) as they are a real surplus from labor’s productivity that remains concentrated at the hands of wealthy businessmen.

Partido Manggagawa

08 December 2022

Workers file P100 wage hike petition before NCR Wage Board

NCR Wage hike petition filed by Kapatiran

 

Citing the existence of urgent and reasonable grounds, the Kapatiran ng mga Unyon at Samahang Manggagawa or KAPATIRAN, on Monday, filed an instant petition for a P100 wage increase before the NCR Wage Board.

 

KAPATIRAN, a labor organization duly registered with the Department of Labor and Employment, was represented by its Chairperson Rey Almendras. He was accompanied by fellow officials of KAPATIRAN and Partido Manggagawa (PM) Chair Renato Magtubo.

 

A brief picket-rally was also held outside the NCR Wage Board offices in Manila, to press the wage body to act on KAPATIRAN’s petition despite the one-year ban as untamed inflation continues to erode the value of wages.

 

Almendras, also the President of Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco Corporation Labor Union, stated that their petition was initiated on behalf of all minimum wage earners in agricultural and non-agricultural sector, retail/trade and in manufacturing sectors in the National Capital Region, whose real wages were greatly diminished by soaring inflation and which nominal amounts remain at starvation level during the past three decades.

 

“The petition to increase the minimum wage stems from the need of the minimum wage earners to recover lost value of their wages, cope with rising cost of living, and afford a dignified life as a common worker,” said Almendras.

 

KAPATIRAN is pressing the NCR Wage Board to come up with a new Wage Order as the inflation rate increased rapidly within months in 2022 – from 2.5% in October 2021 to 7.7% by October 2022. And just before the actual filing of the wage hike petition, news came out of the inflation rate accelerating further to 8.2% in November.

 

The group said the current minimum wage rate of Php 570.00 in NCR would only amount to P11,400.00 monthly income for a laborer who works five days a week. “This is not enough to keep up with the average expenses in their income class,” lamented KAPATIRAN, since as of last year, a household needs at least P12,030 to survive the poverty threshold, according to PSA.

 

“Evidently, minimum wages fall below this poverty threshold and way too far from achieving living wage as provided under the Constitution. The present NCR rate, in fact, constitutes a measly 10% of the Filipinos’ dream for a ‘simple and comfortable life’ defined by NEDA in 2015,” stated KAPATIRAN in the petition.

 

PM Chair, Renato Magtubo, asserted the P100 wage recovery demand as just as it fairly aims to recover lost value of wages that minimum wage earners had prior to inflation.

 

“We in the Nagkaisa Labor Coalition have another track to pursue in rectifying decades of injustice done to workers by RA 6727 or the Wage Rationalization Act. We want this law repealed and replaced by a new law whose mechanisms truly ensure the realization of the living wage  guaranteed by the Constitution,” said Magtubo. 

 

He added that rather than push for the controversial “Maharlika Fund” that would drain off workers’ pension funds in SSS and GSIS, Congress should provide workers “Mahalaga” legislations such nationwide wage increases and reforming the country’s wage fixing mechanism that confined wages to starvation levels.

 

Demand for wage increases and living wage were part of the 5-Point Labor Agenda being pushed by Nagkaisa and United Labor as the basis for engaging Marcos, Jr. Nagkaisa denounced the lack of labor agenda in the Marcos administration through marches and “Blank Paper” protests during the commemoration of Bonifacio Day. 

KAPATIRAN

05 December 2022

Nagkaisa statement on sovereign wealth fund

Wealth fund should come from wealth tax: 

Pera naming mga manggagawa yan, bakit kayo ang nag-uusap?

 

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) are essentially profit-driven state-owned investment funds. Some of our neighboring countries who want to make the most out of their surplus—usually foreign exchange generated from exports—established state-owned entities to invest their excess capital on various instruments. Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, among others, created their own SWFs.

 

With the potential of SWFs to grow, they can distort incentives in an economy where they are invested enough to favor specific economic activities and enterprises. Although SWFs usually invest in foreign instruments, there is nothing stopping them from pouring investments on profitable economic activities and enterprises at home, thus, making SWFs a strategic tool for industrial policy. But this is not necessarily the motivation for the proposed Maharlika Wealth Fund.

 

Now, should workers support the government’s attempt to create an SWF?

 

That public pension funds are identified as sources of financing for the SWF already earns the proposed fund minus points. Public pension funds are fragile. There is a reason both SSS and GSIS are very careful in their investment decisions and that is because that is how they secure future generations of Filipinos. GSIS should know the risks involved especially in foreign money market, after all, their exposure to the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis may have costed the pension fund some of its resources.

 

Can politicians pushing for SWF guarantee the security of workers’ retirement funds while exposing it to potential losses from profit-driven, speculative investment decisions? House representatives who back the SWF argue that pension funds are guaranteed by government funds anyway, and that the SWF will come with sufficient safeguard measures.

 

But NAGKAISA has a better idea to secure workers’ pensions, and that is by not exposing them to unnecessary risks. If SWF should be pursued, it must be funded by true surpluses generated by the economy—the proceeds from wealth tax!

 

In 2020, NAGKAISA floated the idea of taxing the unused assets of the wealthiest in the country. The tax revenue from the wealth tax could have funded pandemic recovery measures of the government. Now that the Philippines is gradually recovering, potential revenues from wealth tax can now be used to fund ideas such as SWF without risking workers’ funds.

 

And what is this obsession about the term “Maharlika”? If the proponents want to connect SWF to a concept from Philippine history, then they should have kept in mind that the Philippine government does not have a good record in managing public funds. That fact is also historical. Unless the proponents have concrete plans about protecting the SWF from turning into a Maharlika Wealth Scam, House Bill 6398 cannot just be allowed to pass. In any case, workers remain critical of this proposal especially when their pensions are on the line.

NAGKAISA Labor Coalition

03 December 2022