Labor partylist calls Tulfo indolent in studying the facts, calls on China to hire him if he resigns

In the midst of the controversy over Mon Tulfo’s remark about lazy Filipino workers, the labor partylist Partido Manggagawa (PM) called the special envoy to China “indolent in studying the facts.” “Si Mon Tulfo ang totoong tamad, tamad mag-imbestiga. Where is the evidence to backup his assertion that Chinese work harder than Filipinos? Does he have a time and motion study? What is his productivity metric?,” exclaimed Rene Magtubo, PM national chair.

PM supported the call of workers for Tulfo to apologize for his baseless remark and resign his post. “We call on China to hire Tulfo for his good work for them once he resigns. Tulfo should have resigned yesterday if he had any sense of decency. But he doesn’t. As envoy to China, he should be protecting Philippine interests in China instead of being an apologist of Chinese investors in the Philippines,” Magtubo insisted.

He added that “All that Tulfo has going for him are opinions of anonymous contractors who aver that Filipino workers are lazy. Lawyers called this hearsay. Ordinary people call this gossip. It is just too much to ask of him to be honest with his facts or lack of it. Likewise, it is ridiculous to ask contractors for their opinions of Filipino workers due to conflict of interest.”

Magtubo explained that “We challenge Tulfo to provide a comparative survey of labor productivity for Chinese and Filipino workers. What is obvious is that Filipino workers are underpaid and overworked. According to a study by a Department of Finance official, real wages in the country have not risen from 2001 to 2016 even as labor productivity has grown by 50% in that period. In other words, the pie has become bigger but Filipino workers have not received crumbs even. Instead employers have greedily taken all the increase in size of the pie. Workers have been denied their fair share in the fruits of production.”

March 13, 2019