Since the Marcos coup against the established system of government in 1972, the rights of Filipino workers have been trampled upon and violated simultaneously and consistently at two levels by an open rule of terror in the service of US imperialism and the most reactionary clique of big comprador-landlords headed by the fascist dictator.
The first level involves the violation of basic national and democratic rights of the entire people, including the workers. The second level involves those rights which specially pertain to the workers as a distinct class; these rights may consistently be referred to as trade union rights.
Intensifying political repression
Despite the formal lifting of martial law in 1981, the fascist puppet dictatorship has not only remained intact but has even entrenched itself further. It continues to launch bigger and wider onslaughts against the entire people and the workers. To Marcos, normalization means institutionalizing and perpetuating the conditions of abnormalcy which is the fascist dictatorship.
Against the democratic and republican principle of people’s sovereignty, this regime of tyranny continues to base itself on the treasonous ground that the Philippine president as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces has the license to concentrate on his single person supreme executive, legislative and judicial authority. And this usurpation of authority has been consistently and repeatedly upheld by a captive Supreme Court.
General Order No. 5, the antilabor Labor Code, Presidential Decree 823, Batas Pambansa 130, Batas Pambansa 227, BP Resolution No. 473 are distinguishably antiworker issuances of the fascist regime but are inextricably linked with the violation of the basic national and democratic rights of the people. The simultaneous violation of both basic democratic rights and trade union rights are most dramatically seen in concrete acts of fascist violence, like the arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and murder of workers in the course of union-busting and strike-breaking campaigns.
The fascist puppet dictatorship is the monster born of the political and economic crisis of the ruling system in a semicolonial and semifeudal society. This monster has come forth because of the excessive shifting of the burden of imperialist crisis to the country and the inability of the domestic ruling classes to settle internal differences amicably and rule in the old way.
Marcos might think himself clever in citing the growing anti-imperialist and antifeudal movement of the people as the excuse for his despotism. But under his despotism, the crisis has worsened and the revolutionary movement has accelerated its growth from year to year. The fascist dictatorship has served only to aggravate the crisis and compel the people to rise.
At any rate, US imperialism and the Marcos regime agree that anticommunism is a convenient excuse for covering up their inimical roles and for perpetuating all sorts of barbarities against all patriotic and democratic forces. Thus, the working class and its revolutionary party have always been pinpointed as the main target of the fascist counterrevolution.
In fact, those suspected of being communists suffer the most heinous forms of fascist violence; and those who are regarded as enemies of the dictatorship are invariably denounced as communists even if they are not. Anticommunism is a worn-out line of imperialists, fascists and other reactionary diehards for rationalizing their oppression and exploitation of the people, especially the workers. It accords with the reactionary determination to keep the workers a docile source of profits and prevent them from effectively asserting and exercising their rights.
The Marcos dictatorship shamelessly advertises throughout the world that it has been able to keep Philippine labor cheap for the benefit of foreign investors. Not satisfied with the long-standing semifeudal conditions that generate a large supply of cheap labor, the dictatorship has adopted policies clearly intended and objectively resulting in the aggravation of these conditions and has vigorously acted to repress the workers in order to press down their wages.
Since the start of the fascist dictatorship, the right to strike and conduct other concerted activities has been taken away from Filipino workers in line with the all-out attack on the national and democratic rights of the people. It was presumed by the fascists that without the key right to strike, trade unions not outrightly busted would wither on the vine. The entire trade union movement would be destroyed and all benefits it had gained through collective bargaining would be wiped out.
Reacting to the upsurges of the workers’ struggle despite the strike ban, the regime has always pretended to take steps towards the restoration of the right to strike. But in fact, the regime always expands the coverage of the strike ban and increases the pretexts and the methods for preventing and breaking up strikes. In order to sow terror among all workers, trade unions and labor federations suspected of being communist-led have been outlawed as “subversive” organizations. Their leaders and militant members have been forced underground and hunted down, tortured when arrested and detained indefinitely without being charged, if not summarily executed.
Leaders and members of other trade unions and labor federations that are not suspected of being communist but have acted militantly in the interest of the workers have also been arbitrarily arrested and their families starved in the process in order to make more ripples of intimidation against the workers. Government employees have been banned from organizing trade unions. In the course of picketing in strikes that cannot be preempted, workers have been mauled, run over, shot at and killed by the military, police and scabs. In other cases, workers have been kidnapped, tortured and murdered beyond the public view. Antiworker crimes are easily perpetrated because these are encouraged and condoned by the Marcos regime.
Organized or not into trade unions, masses of workers have been subjected to such campaigns of terror as zoning, raids on their communities, various forms of humiliation, looting of their houses and ejection from their slum dwellings. The workers are even more vulnerable to atrocities and abuses committed in the name of counterinsurgency.
Benefits made available by law as a result of several decades of trade union struggle have been removed or drastically reduced. It becomes a feat of workers’ unity and militancy to secure a collective bargaining agreement satisfactory to the workers.
While wages have been frozen, their real value is continuously cut down by the rising prices of basic commodities. The workers are further weighed down by withholding taxes, special levies and other exactions. Ways for employers to avoid the payment of regular and minimum wages set by law proliferate.
Whenever real wages fall extremely low as a result both of a protracted wage freeze and an abrupt price hike initiated by him, the fascist dictator expects the workers to beg for wage increases from him and thus he presents himself as the redeemer of his own victims.
But the formal wage increase or the cost-of-living allowance that the dictator orders invariably falls short of the previous real wage level and is used to camouflage the erosion of wages. Worst of all, these paltry concessions are not enforced but remain on paper. Marcos also puts in exemptions and loopholes for employers to avoid paying these concessions.
Another deceptive method used by the fascist regime to misrepresent itself as a friend of labor is the hiring and coddling of a handful of labor aristocrats to whom it has assigned the pretense of integrating all trade unions into the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines and standing in for labor in “tripartite” rituals intended to endorse antilabor measures.
Marcos and his imperialist masters have actually no intention of making the TUCP more than a paper organization and integrating all unions under a one-union-one-industry concept. There is the simple fear that even a regimented labor organization might get out of hand. There is a preference for a more manageable clutch of labor dealers for misrepresenting labor.
Still another bane in the labor front is the encouragement given by the fascist regime to such foreign agencies as the US Central Intelligence Agency conduit Asian American Free Labor Institute, that specialize in diverting trade unions into pro-imperialist and reactionary channels, corrupting trade union leaders and subverting the national and democratic interests of the Filipino working class and people.
Contrary to the expectations of the fascists and their revisionist collaborators, the cheap labor policy and the wide range of other investment incentives (anti-expropriation guarantees, free flow of foreign exchange, tax exemptions, etc.) have not induced the foreign investors to invest heavily in the country as to industrialize it and generate sufficient employment opportunities.
Increasing rate of economic exploitation
There have been increases in foreign direct investments in such areas as trading, banking, minor processing, mining, plantations and the like where the profits come high and quick. But certainly, there have been no investments in heavy and basic industries. The transnational corporations have even made far more local borrowings in order to promote their trade offensive and stay ahead in purchasing foreign exchange for import payments and profit remittances.
The main neocolonial thrust of the pseudodevelopment policy of the US-Marcos regime is not industrialization but anti-industrialization. Foreign loans have been poured into the country, especially during the 1970s, in order to hasten the importation of construction steel, all sorts of equipment and other supplies for anti-industrial projects and thus help pump-prime industries in the United States and other countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), i.e., the advanced capitalist countries, which have been in decline due to the crisis of overproduction.
Financial resources that would have otherwise gone into industrial development have been wasted on massive and rapid programs of building roads, bridges, ports and dams, five-star hotels, convention center, office buildings, palaces and other luxury constructions; acquiring transport vehicles, military equipment, communication equipment, marine equipment, farm inputs, a nuclear plant and geothermal plants, computers and other office equipment, upper-class luxuries and intermediate goods and knockdowns for tariff-circumventing and cheap labor-using pseudo-manufacturing enterprises for reexport and local market penetration.
The so-called export-oriented manufacturing enterprises like those in garments and electronics are involved in mere fringe processing. These are a decoy for the heavy importation of foreign manufactures that do not add to basic industrialization of the country. These enterprises are even farther removed from industrialization, have far less local value-added, generate far less employment and drain foreign exchange faster than the so-called import-substitution industries of the 1950s.
The country does not actually make any net income from the export earnings of the reexport pseudo-manufacturing enterprises because of the heavy import payments for equipment, intermediate products and raw materials; the outflow of profits, interest payments and the like; tariff exemptions and local market penetration; and the cost of putting up export processing zones and infrastructures for these zones. The wages paid to regular factory employees are hardly enough for subsistence.
The Kautskyites are utterly misinformed should they believe that the multinational corporations would concentrate on high-technology industries in the North and shift labor-intensive industries to the South to the extent of industrializing the Philippines, converting it into a modern industrialized neocolony and allowing it to depart from a pattern of raw-material production for export. The nature of modern imperialism remains unchanged. It is moribund and there is no truth more telling than its current economic crisis. It is also completely in error to imagine that the US-Marcos regime has carried out land reform in support of a supposed neocolonial industrialization.
After more than a decade of fascist dictatorship and unhindered dictation by the US government and the US-controlled International Monetary Fund-World Bank combine, the Philippines has an even more backward, agrarian and semifeudal economy. It remains dependent on raw-material exports (mainly agricultural) and foreign loans to be able to import manufactures, semimanufactures and raw materials.
The principal means of production is still a backward form of agriculture. Not more than 4 percent of agricultural land is worked by imported tractors. What passes for local manufacturing is heavily dependent on imported equipment, semi-manufactures and raw materials. There are no heavy and basic industries, no capital goods industry which is the basis for industrialization. The Philippines has a long way to go before it can exploit its rich natural resource base for industrialization.
Among the producers of goods as of 1979, industrial workers (in mining, quarrying, manufacturing, construction and utilities) are 22 percent; and peasants (including farm workers, loggers, fishermen, animal husbandmen and handicraftsmen which are mainly sideline occupations) are 78 percent.
The share of industrial employment is reported to have fallen from 17.6 percent in 1970 to 14.2 percent in 1979. It is in the share of the service sector that employment is supposed to have risen from 23.5 percent to 34.2 percent in the same period, absorbing the reductions from both industry and agriculture.
The fascist dictatorship has deepened and aggravated the semifeudal character of the economy dominated by the big comprador bourgeoisie and the landlord class. In the absence of genuine land reform and national industrialization, feudal and semifeudal forms of exploitation have persisted and maintained a circular relationship. The national bourgeoisie is increasingly squeezed by the economic policy of the US-Marcos regime. The urban petty bourgeoisie finds itself in a sorrier state.
In the 1980s, foreign loans have become scarce and more burdensome, raw material exports more depressed than before and yet the imperialists are pushing harder for import liberalization. The value of the peso is sinking daily. The fascist dictatorship is in deep financial trouble.
The regime is compelled to collect more taxes and more fees from local sources at a time that these same sources have far less income than before. It is as if the fascists do not know that more taxes could be collected in the 1970s because of the artificial prosperity induced by foreign borrowing in certain sections of the economy. The people are revolted by the fact that the leading items in government expenditures are those for the military and foreign debt service, far ahead of essential services.
Unemployment is going beyond 50 percent of the labor force. The inflation rate is well beyond the doctored figure in the regime’s statistics. Massive layoffs and soaring prices of basic commodities are gravely affecting not only the toiling masses of workers and peasants but also the urban petty bourgeoisie. They are being reduced to a life of want and misery. At least 90 percent of the people now live below the poverty line.
The facile explanation of the fascist autocrat for the economic disaster is the world capitalist recession. But puppetry to the dictates of US imperialism is his inescapable responsibility. Besides, he has a monopoly of responsibility for so many inflationary activities, price-hiking taxes, special levies and the unbridled graft and corruption that is unprecedented in Philippine history.
The fascist dictatorship has no solution to the economic disaster except to poise more acts of terrorism against the rising proletariat and people, await business recovery in the United States and beg for more foreign loans at more onerous terms, more US military assistance and trade concessions. The political and economic bankruptcy of the US-Marcos regime is obvious.
The political and economic struggle of workers
Within some three years after the declaration of martial law in 1972, the trade union movement appeared to have been conquered and pacified. The fascist dictatorship added to the serious injury it had inflicted on the trade union movement the insult that the workers together with the rest of the people had acquiesced to the intensification of their oppression and exploitation.
But beneath the surface, the Filipino workers detested the fascist dictatorship and their anger seethed. The prudence of unarmed people before an enemy armed to the teeth and eager to attack them is not acquiescence. Trade unionists and cadres of the proletarian party who were not known to the fascists kept intact as many trade unions as they could and as many more as they could develop.
Thus, the upsurge of workers’ strikes would come about in 1975 and 1976, starting with the La Tondeña strike. Before mid-1976, more than 300 strikes occurred nationwide. Bukluran emerged as an alliance of trade unions and other people’s organizations, including the religious and conscienticized laity, to provide a wide support for the workers’ strike movement. From then on, the trade union movement would continue to march forward despite the odds and risks. The next high point would be the formation of Kilusang Mayo Uno on May 1, 1980 as a broad alliance of all trade unions and labor federations devoted to the development of a genuine, militant and nationalist trade union movement. This is the result of open mass struggles and patient, discreet work. This workers’ movement is far stronger and larger than the Bukluran. In terms of principles and magnitude, KMU put to shame the profascist and pro-imperialist TUCP, which is just a paper organization of long-discredited labor aristocrats.
In June 1982, the National Coalition for the Protection of Workers’ Rights (NCPWR) was established amidst the growing strength of the trade union movement and in the face of increasing threats of renewed antilabor white terror. The formation of the coalition was indeed timely because in August and September the threats were carried out in an obvious attempt of the fascist dictator to assure US imperialism before his tributary trip to the United States that he could always pounce on the Filipino workers for the benefit of US multinational firms.
The fascist dictatorship had been under orders from the US multinational interests to attack the Filipino workers because the trade union movement had seemed to be on the way to carrying out more strikes than it had in 1981 and these were increasingly directed against the multinational firms. Even in the sacrosanct Bataan Export Processing Zone, 15,000 workers from 18 factories had made a general walkout.
To some extent, the labor crackdown adversely affected the momentum of the strike movement. More strikes could have broken out in the October-December period. It is boasted by the fascist authorities that the figure came to only 155 compared to 260 in 1981. But what is glossed over is that 10.6 million man hours were lost in the 1977-1980 period. More companies of major size and importance were affected in 1982. So, the repressive actions did not at all stop the trade union movement from reaching a high level of success.
The attempt to suppress strikes by the use of brute force against local unions, labor federations and the KMU can only result in the further accumulation of workers’ demands and the outbreak of strikes on a wide scale eventually. The masses of workers are agitated by the rapid deterioration of their economic conditions and by the clear injustice of being denied even those paltry concessions decreed by the fascist regime several years ago.
It can be expected that in the spiral of antilabor repression and workers’ resistance, the trade union movement will come out more tempered and stronger than ever before. The fascist dictatorship has unwittingly served to generate not only militant trade unionists but also proletarian revolutionaries and to render ineffective the labor aristocrats and other antilabor elements in the trade union movement.
While recognizing that economic conditions are so bad and cry out for the formation of trade unions, the workers also recognize that every attempt to exercise their trade union rights and carry forward their economic struggle has to cope with extraordinarily unjust laws and brutal measures used by both the fascist state and specific employers, especially the firms close to the ruling clique.
The antilabor policy and actions of the US-Marcos regime are so harsh that no economic struggle can be waged without the corresponding political struggle. A trade union whose members do not have sufficient political education along a national democratic line and which is not therefore politically prepared to overcome the anti-union and anti-strike measures of the regime can easily lose its bearing and cannot last long.
The workers themselves ask political questions on how to contend with the fascist dictatorship as soon as the formation of a trade union is proposed to them. A labor organizer would fail in his role if he were not ready to answer these questions at any time and if he were not to deal with the matter of political struggle comprehensively as soon as possible.
Basic political questions are matters of life and death for the union. The workers need to understand fully the dangers and difficulties that they face and how to cope with these. But it is not enough for the workers to know how to beat or go around the fascist laws and measures. They must have a comprehensive political education—a national democratic education—that makes clear what they stand for. They must understand their class role beyond the narrow interests of the trade union and they must participate in a comprehensive political struggle.
The labor organizer who can effectively link the economic struggle with the political struggle is more successful in trade union work at the present time than one who acts according to such notions as that trade unionism must have nothing to do with politics; that economic struggle must first be attended to for a long time before the political struggle; or that, if there be politics, it must be confined to the interests of the trade unions as if these were merely a pressure group within the present system. Let there be no misunderstanding, though. Politics is no substitute for competent knowledge of trade unionism. It is no excuse for incompetence and failure to do what it takes to form and keep a union. In the education of the workers, there must be a basic course on trade unionism, with relevant political questions dealt with; and then right away there must be a political course following. There is no harm though if the basic political course comes ahead as the case may be. It is possible for political organizations, including the proletarian party, to reach some workers before they can be reached or attended to by a labor organizer.
At any rate, in organizing workers into a trade union, the labor organizer must have adequate knowledge of working class history and existing labor laws. He must conduct social investigation among the workers according to a checklist of rights and benefits, draw up the list of demands with the workers. He must form discreet groups and an organizing committee and recruit members. He must impart all the necessary basic knowledge about trade union work, relevant legal procedures and so on and so forth.
Workers who have the correct trade union and political education are the most determined in struggle and have a keen appreciation of the strategy and tactics of the struggle. They are the best able in coping with the dangers and difficulties posed by the fascists and the imperialists and are not awed by them. They know what to do under whatever circumstances. They have a vantage point from which to view the trade unions within a wider context and discover the many ways to assert the rights of the working class and let this class assert its significant role in the people’s struggle for national and social liberation.
Experience proves that workers who are well educated politically are vigilant against company spies and fascist agents and against all sorts of pitfalls and are at the same time militant and confident of what they are doing at the critical time that the union is in the process of formation. They know that the union can be aborted when the employer and the fascists resort to accusing them of being subversives or rebels and undertake countermeasures against them.
When they are ready to make their demands for economic benefits and against unfair labor practices, they are prepared not only to strike and picket but also to undertake alternative courses of action in view of outright prohibitions and other measures against the right to strike and even against the right to form a union.
These alternative courses of action include the slowdown, sit-down, mass leave of absence, trooping the offices, mass chanting, public exposure of the injustices, etc., and their almost infinite variations. These can be as effective as the strike if sustained. These can be sustained only if there is a high degree of unity and militancy among the workers.
Since 1975 and 1976, these have been resorted to on a wide scale. If done for a short period in a given company, these actions are actually milder than the outright strike. But if prolonged, these can cut down production as much as a strike does. In most of these actions, the workers stay in the company premises according to their schedules and so the employer cannot replace them with scabs.
The workers have to be resourceful in making their demands, because of the union and strike bans and other extraordinary obstacles. In certain areas, workers have measures in order to drive sense into the heads of employers who use their connections with the fascists to suppress the workers. In still other areas, workers have had to resort to armed force to defend themselves from the prior use of violence by their employers in connivance with the fascists.
A number of urban workers who have become unemployed and who are on the manhunt list of the fascists have joined the ranks of the armed revolutionary movement. The fascists have given them no other choice. Before going to the countryside, they make countersurveillance on the fascists to seize arms and bring these with them to the countryside. Farm workers have been joining the people’s army for a long time as the depression of export crops has worsened. Thus, the sugar and coconut areas are particularly aflame with the armed revolution.
All the foregoing forceful actions of workers are cited in the controlled press from military and other government sources. These actions are a response to the intensified exploitation and oppression of the workers as well as the entire economic disaster wrought by the fascist dictatorship. So far, Marcos himself has found difficulties in making the workers his scapegoat. The one-sided victimization of the working class by the US-Marcos dictatorship is too large a fact to conceal at this stage.
The most effective way to stop the workers from resorting to extraordinary measures in order to defend their rights and interests is to end the fascist dictatorship and cast away its antilabor, antinational and antidemocratic policies. If workers must be encouraged to avail themselves of lawful means it becomes the responsibility of the authorities to do away with their own fascist laws and respect the trade union and all other democratic rights of workers, together with those of the whole people.
The aggravation of the political and economic crisis by the fascist armed counterrevolution has been most effective in agitating the workers and the entire people to take the path of democratic armed revolution. The fascist dictatorship is unwittingly urging the people to rise up in arms and increasing the ranks of armed revolutionaries.
The political education of workers should not be limited to making the best out of the present political conditions or to pleading for a few minor concessions at a time. It should not be limited even to seeking the end of the fascist dictatorship. It must encompass all the tasks to change the semicolonial and semifeudal conditions fundamentally and to build a truly new society (this phrase has nothing to do with Marcos’ false slogan) that is completely independent, democratic, just and prosperous. Political education means a basic and comprehensive understanding of the national democratic program, which includes the following points: national independence from US imperialism; the victory of democracy over fascism and feudalism; genuine land reform and national industrialization; the promotion of a national, scientific and mass culture; self-determination and all-round progress of the national minorities; and foreign policy committed to the development of friendly relations with all countries and peoples on the basis of independence, equality and mutual benefit.
Political education further means that the workers should become conscious of their own class outlook and methodology; their historic mission in the national democratic and socialist stages of the Philippine revolution; the world development of capitalism up to the stage of imperialism; the basic principles of socialism; and the principles of internationalism. Of course, there should be higher courses to raise the theoretical level of the advanced elements of the working class.
By their correct political orientation, the workers recognize the importance and necessity of linking up with the rest of the people and engaging in political struggle beyond the confines of the trade union movement. They should participate in activities and campaigns that promote the national democratic line. They need the support of other patriotic and progressive classes just as these classes also need the support of the workers. The victory of the national democratic revolution is not possible without a broad national united front.
The industrial workers in this country are still a small minority. Only in a broad sense as to include other wage earners can it be said that we have a sizable working class. At any rate, it is of decisive importance that the industrial proletariat link up with the peasants and farm workers in order to advance in a comprehensive way their common interests as the toiling masses of the country.
The toiling masses of workers and peasants should further link up with the urban petty bourgeoisie because its interests are close to theirs, especially upon the worsening of the social crisis. They should also make distinctions among the capitalists and link up with the national bourgeoisie against the foreign monopoly capitalists and the big comprador-landlords, especially the fascists.
In the course of political education and mass struggles, the most advanced elements of the working class become the cadres and members of the proletarian party. If such a party is at the core of the leadership of the trade union movement, the workers can play a more effective role in promoting their own class interests and the interests of the whole people along the national democratic line. But even then, such a party is always for an alliance of trade unions and labor federations irrespective of ideologies, because there are sufficient patriotic and progressive grounds for unity and the process of learning from each other and supporting each other.
At any rate, the struggle to protect the political and economic rights of workers should encourage them to get organized as a political force and develop their own political strength and advance as the vanguard of social revolution and modern industry.
