Ang Bayan, Vol. I, No. 5, October 15, 1969
Under the auspices of Labor Secretary Blas Ople, labor aristocrats made a formal agreement last month to merge the Philippine Labor Center and the Philippine Trade Unions Council.
The “united labor movement” was obviously necessitated by the emerging wave of workers’ strikes challenging the authority of bourgeois trade union leaders.
The labor aristocrats expressed the view that most of the recent strikes were caused by “squabbles” within and between unions. Slavishly, they declared, “Management is just the innocent victim of these strikes.” The truth is that the trade unions run by labor aristocrats are either disintegrating or rebelling against sham trade unionism. The labor aristocrats justified their merger as a step to “make organized labor a potent sector this coming elections.” They declared, “By being directly involved in the affairs of the government, labor can play a decisive role during elections and can put into office pro-labor officials.”
The truth is that the merger is another transitory device to create the illusion that the working class supports the Marcos regime in the November elections.
Among the labor aristocrats, there can be no lasting and true unity because all of them treat trade unions as their own private business ventures.
The Communist Party of the Philippines should work hard in creating party branches and groups among workers in factories, mines, transportation lines and shops in order to topple down fake labor leaders and bring about the ideological, political and organizational unity of the working class. The Party should exert all efforts to smash the bourgeois authority of labor aristocrats and spread among the workers Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, which is the proletarian revolutionary ideology.
