Partido Manggagawa condemns arrest of 20 Labor Day rallyists in Cebu

The militant Partido Manggagawa (PM) condemned the arrest of 20 rallyists who assembled at the Plaza Independencia in Cebu City this morning. Police arrested 8 miners from Carmen Copper in Toledo and 12 fishers from Talisay City on alleged violation of quarantine protocols. “The government is using covid-19 as an alibi to suppress the right to peaceful assembly of workers who are airing their demands on Labor Day,” asserted Dennis Derige, spokesperson for PM-Cebu.

 

A third group of rallyists who were workers in the Mactan Economic Zone and other factories together with student supporters were finally able to hold a short program at Plaza Independencia. All three groups, who are affiliates of PM and Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (SENTRO), were supposed to commemorate Labor Day by marching around Cebu City. The arrests effectively scuttled the Labor Day plans of workers in Cebu City.

 

“Today’s arrests reveals the impunity of police against workers who are suffering under the economic crisis that has been spawned by the failed covid response of the Duterte administration. Similarly, the commemoration of Bonifacio Day was marred by the arrest of five union organizers who led a workers protests against mass layoffs in the Mactan ecozone. Covid is being weaponized against workers who are fighting for their rights and welfare,” stated Derige.

 

The workers in Cebu and in other major cities nationwide were to commemorate Labor Day with the theme “Tabakk ng Manggagawa Laban sa Palpak.” “Tabakk stands for Trabaho, Ayuda, Bakuna, Karapatan at Kasarinlan which are the key demands of workers in response to the economic crisis and the covid pandemic,” explained Rene Magtubo, PM national chair.

 

He added that “However, workers are also raising the political call ‘Palpak, Palitan.’ This means we are calling on the people to replace the inutile and authoritarian government with a new one which will respect political rights and respond to workers’ demand for social and economic reform.”

 

In Metro Manila, PM, SENTRO and other groups in the Nagkaisa labor coalition held a motorcade from the ABS-CBN headquarters to the People Power Monument to Mendiola and finally at Liwasang Bonifacio.

 

As of the time of writing, the release of the 20 rallyists in Cebu have been put on hold by the police despite the payment of fines for each of the workers arrested.

 

Photos can be accessed at https://www.facebook.com/partidomanggagawa/posts/10159032773159323

 

May 1, 2021

Labor group to government: Is cruelty becoming a new normal?

The rise in the number of cases involving cruel treatment by security forces against violators of quarantine protocols has alarmed the labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) which sees this pattern as tolerated impunity that is becoming a new normal.

“Can’t our security forces in dreadful military uniforms act humanely before their fellow humans? Have they been instructed to apply brute force against anyone they perceive to be pasaway? There must be a new culture for a new normal being created here for these inhumane actions to be tolerated,” said PM Chair Renato Magtubo.

The labor group reminded the government that human rights and labor rights guaranteed by the Constitution have never been demolished by President Duterte’s emergency powers under the Bayanihan Act.

According to police reports, there are more than a hundred thousand ECQ violators who have been apprehended or arrested since the lockdown has been imposed.  The most recent among them were the Makati (Parras) and Quezon City (Ragos and a fish vendor) incidents that have gone viral in the social media. There was also a PUP student leader among them, Rexlon Aumentado, who was illegally detained for 3 days.

The group also cited the police dispersal of a workers’ picketline in Cavite during Black Friday night. Dasmarinas police who refused to give their names threatened two strikers—at the Sejung Apparel Inc. factory in the First Cavite Industrial Estate—with arrest for allegedly violating the quarantine rules. “Labor rights are not suspended during the ECQ and this incident breaks all the rules of engagement, especially the guidelines on the conduct of security personnel during labor disputes,” Magtubo insisted.

PM is concerned that had there been no anonymous people posting their videos of those incidents, these human rights violations in thousands of unreported circumstances will just go unnoticed and perpetrators go unpunished.

“Bakit ba naging habit na ang pananakit? Bakit ba mayroon nang nalikhang malaki at maliit, malupit at mahina dito sa paglaban sa Covid-19,” lamented Magtubo.

“Makataong Tugon Hindi Militarisasyon” is one of PM’s “Apat na Dapat” Labor Day demands. The other demands include “Ayudang Sapat Para sa Lahat”, “Balik Trabahong Ligtas”, and “Ayudang Lagpas sa Panahon ng Lockdown.”

The group is with Nagkaisa! labor coalition which, together with Kilusang Mayo Uno, will be holding home and community protest online on Labor Day.

#MakataongTugonHindiMilitarisasyon

#MayDay2020

29 April 2020

Martial law extension or expansion will be a very expensive, unproductive experiment

Photo from Inquirer

The battle of Marawi has already entered its 9th week.  And it won’t be over until everything gets back to normal.  In fact, it is the normalization and rehabilitation part of this conflict which is a bigger war to win since failure in this aspect, we believe, will only create more conflict in this highly stratified region of the country.

 

We anticipate, though, that Marawi will ultimately fall back into the hands of our government forces.  War ultimately ends even without a victor. What it leaves, definitely, are the enormous humanitarian costs that will be very difficult to measure.  The Marawi war has already claimed at least 500 lives and created more than 200,000 bakwits.  Thousands of livelihoods were also lost as the city was razed into the ground by aerial bombings and fierce ground battles. Furthermore, the declaration of martial law has endangered civilians’ free exercise of human rights in the entire island of Mindanao.

 

The Supreme Court has already ruled on the legality of the declaration of Martial Law in Mindanao but the 60-day duration of Proclamation 216 is set to expire on July 22, 2017.  Hence, the President, Congress and the entire nation now face a bothering question on whether the Martial Law in Mindanao should be extended or be expanded to cover the entire Philippines.  The House leadership, when asked, is even willing to extend and expand Martial Law for the entire term of the President or until 2022.

 

NAGKAISA labor coalition declares its opposition to the extension or expansion of Martial Law based on the following grounds: 

 

1.     It is not necessary;

2.     It will be very expensive; 

3.     It is unproductive and is a disincentive to economic progress;

4.     It weakens our democratic institutions; and

5.     It strengthens the hands of the totalitarians.

 

We find no compelling reason to warrant its extension or expansion at this point in time.  We believe that lawlessness in many forms can be addressed by a highly professional and effective military/police leadership. Ensuring professionalism and quality armed services is where Presidential powers are best exercised. 

 

Furthermore, extending this kind of war for a much longer time and carried out on a nationwide scale will become a very expensive experiment for a country whose development is highly dependent on loans and regressive taxes. It is therefore unacceptable to see the proposed expansion of VAT and imposition of excise taxes on oil, automobiles and sugar drinks funding not a social program but infrastructure for war.

 

Lastly, it will be very unproductive for the President to spend his remaining years in office for this costly war.  War is both destruction and political distraction.  It neither creates nor equally redistributes social wealth that is now concentrated in the hands of oligarchs.

 

The President, in other words, has a better war to wage and win against contractualization, low wages, and high prices of basic goods and services.  If you want peace, Mr. President, build social justice and economic inclusion first.

 

Dito ka namin gustong maramdaman

Nagkaisa Labor Coalition

19 July 2017

Cybercrime law a product of low quality legislation, sloppiness of P-Noy

PRESS RELEASE

04 October 2012

  

Even as authors retract and propose amendments to Republic Act No. 10175 or the anti-cybercrime law, the militant Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) advised netizens and the general public to expect more low quality legislation and more blunders from Malacanang.

“The cybercrime law was definitely a low quality piece of legislation approved and completed into law by a signature of a sloppy President,” stated Partido ng Manggagawa chair Renato Magtubo.

The labor group believes that while the State has the right to impose regulation to any industry or any activity to promote the common good, to regulate freedom just to flush out cybercriminals however requires a very meticulous mind and a careful balancing act.

“We are also interested in seeing the faces and in penalizing cybercriminals who are victimizing women, children, OFWs and many innocent citizens.  But their confinement cannot be made a substitute to the curtailment of our freedom to express ourselves,” stressed Magtubo.

Magtubo, who is a former partylist representative, said the labor sector never expects a major change in this level of legislation with certificates of candidacies for the 2013 national and local elections filled up with the same names and parochial interests dominating the country’s elective positions.

The former lawmaker recalled the same blunder attending the passage of the infamous Electric Power Industry Reform Act or EPIRA, which Gloria Arroyo, upon signing, admitted that the law contained many flaws and loopholes. 

“Now, we’re suffering the harsh consequence of EPIRA by having the most expensive power rates in the world.  Yet Congress is not moving to repeal this law,” added Magtubo.

And as convenor of the biggest labor coalition NAGKAISA!, Magtubo also complained that while the cybercrime law was enacted in speed,  the labor-backed legislation such as the Security of Tenure Bill (SOT), the Freedom of Information (FOI) and the Reproductive Health Bill (RH) gather dust in the legislative mill.

Release all detained Malaysian socialists and stop on-going crackdown

Urgent Appeal: Crackdown on Malaysian Socialists

Dato' Sri Mohd Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak,

Prime Minister of Malaysia,

Prime Minister's Office,

Main Block, Perdana Putra Building,

Federal Government Administrative Centre,

62502 Putrajaya , MALAYSIA

Dear Sir,

We are writing to you, to express our outrage and our strongest condemnation over your government's on-going crackdown and the arrest of the 30 PSM Activists.

We are appalled by your government and the police's latest actions and view this as an attempt by your government to intimidate Malaysian citizens from exercising their civil and political rights

We further demand that your government stops the assault on freedom of expression and release all the 30 PSM Activists immediately.

Yours sincerely,

Renato Magtubo

National Chairperson

Partido ng Manggagawa (Labor Party-Philippines)

Filipino workers call for a stop to trade union repression in South Korea

August 11, 2008

His Excellency Lee Myung-bak
President, Republic of Korea
Blue House
Seoul , South Korea

Filipino workers support the call to stop trade union repression in South Korea

The Partido ng Manggagawa (Labor Party-Philippines) expresses its solidarity with the South Korean workers who are now the subject of relentless attack from the Lee Myung-bak government.

In particular, we are deeply concerned about the conditions of the top leadership of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and its affiliates who were illegally arrested and for those who are still subject of police manhunt. We firmly believe that the Lee Myung-bak government had grossly violated their basic human and trade union rights.

We likewise believe that the South Korean government cannot simply resort to such brutal actions against the KCTU without circumventing its own laws and disregarding international covenants on labor rights and standards. And that was done by declaring KCTU’s legitimate strike against the April 18 Protocol on US beef importation and other trade union issues ‘illegal’, thus giving the government the legal cover to launch a crackdown on trade unions opposed to that policy.

Fighting against what workers believed are policies inimical to its socio-economic and occupational interests – as in this case the issues of food safety and health hazards and trade union rights – can always be valid unless otherwise declared by the government as nonsensical demands. In fact, it was with great pride that Korean workers stood up against the proposed US-Korea FTA and other policies which they believe endanger their rights, safety, well-being, and their future.

On this ground, we would like to convey this message to the Korean government: that the international labor movement would always support and likewise assert the validity and legitimacy of that kind of action by our fellow workers in Korea. May we humbly remind the government that the right to strike and dissent is a universal human right.

Accordingly, we appeal on the Lee Myung-bak government to stop the repression against the KCTU and its affiliates’ leadership by unconditionally releasing those who were already arrested and detained, and recalling all arrest warrants issued against trade union leaders.

We also call on the South Korean government to respect fundamental trade union rights, including the right to strike on political matters involving national policies that may affect the socio-economic well-being of Korean workers and that it fully guarantees freedom of assembly and people's right to dissent.

The existence of a vibrant trade union movement in South Korea is a towering symbol and a reminder that indeed, formal democracy exist in the country. Without it, or placing it under severe state repression, would bring South Korea’s image back to its dark past when it was still under the state of iron rule.

We will closely monitor the government actions in South Korea while assuring fellow workers there that Filipino workers are solidly behind their cause.


Sincerely,


Renato B. Magtubo
Chairperson, Partido ng Manggagawa (Labor Party-Philippines)
Former Party-List Representative, Philippine Congress
rbmagtubo@yahoo.com

PARTIDO NG MANGGAGAWA
114 Road 20, Project 8 Quezon City, Philippines
Telefax: +632-4410947
Email: partido_ng_manggagawa@yahoo.com