With the start of mass layoffs of
workers at Boracay establishments, the labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) today
called on the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to initiate a dialogue
with affected workers on the terms of emergency assistance. PM also demanded
that all workers, including unregistered ones, be beneficiaries of aid to
affected workers.
“Unregistered workers in Boracay,
numbering 9,365, deserve the same assistance as 17,328 registered workers.
Unregistered workers comprise a third of all Boracay employees and should not
be denied aid. Like registered workers, they also have families to feed and support,”
asserted Rene Magtubo, PM national chair.
He added that “DOLE’s proposed
assistance of insurance and compensation equivalent to the minimum wage is not
necessarily bad per se. Yet it was concocted by bureaucrats in the comforts of
their offices or by officials in suits and ties. It was not the demand of affected
workers themselves. Thus we call on the DOLE to set aside their top-down
approach and instead initiate a dialogue with representatives of affected
workers to get their real-life grievances and concerns in order to craft appropriate
emergency response and assistance for the duration of the closure of Boracay.”
PM also called on Boracay workers,
registered and unregistered, to organize themselves so they could have voice
and representation. “Only be organizing themselves can Boracay workers claim
and win the kind of relief and assistance is suitable to their conditions,”
Magtubo insisted.
He argued that in the internationally recognized
human rights approach, participation of affected populations is one of the key
principles.
PM also proposed that displaced Boracay
workers be given the option to be employed in the cleanup of the island on
above-minimum wages. “DOLE’s plan of compensating affected Boracay workers on
minimum wages for 30 to 90 days falls short of sustaining them for the six
month duration of the closure of the island. Thus it makes sense to complement
this emergency assistance with the option of being employed in the cleanup and
rehabilitation but on wages and benefits that must be above minimum,” Magtubo
elaborated.
April 9, 2018
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