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“Fear is still there, but the need to stand by our principles always wins. We also need to continue campaigning for the welfare of our fellow government workers.”
Courage said that at the onset of the pandemic, they have called for free mass testing and treatment, provision of sufficient PPEs for frontliners, and rightful compensation of the health hazard faced by all public sector employees in the line of duty but were not met by the government.
On August 5, the Philippine government’s pandemic response team put the province of Cavite under MECQ from Aug. 6 to 15. This is part of the supposed efforts of the national government to curb the spread of the dreaded COVID-19, particularly its more transmissible and deadlier Delta variant.
A local advertisement here in the Philippines once asked – where can your P20 bring you? For government workers here, it meant a measly salary increase in the last five years of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Agricultural workers filed complaints before the International Labor Organization on June 23 against what they deem as state-sanctioned union-busting, harassment, and political killings.
A government workers union said Duterte’s executive order directing the full devolution of certain government functions is silent over thousands of contractual workers who are most likely to be laid-off when this order is implemented.
“Our teachers and our learners alike suffered the effects of state abandonment even as we ourselves are grappling with the raging pandemic and economic crisis. How long will the DepEd and the Duterte regime turn a blind eye to the needs of the education sector?"
More than half of Filipino households said that if they lose all of their income sources, their resources to cover daily needs could only last up to two weeks.
Alliance of Contractual Employees (ACE) UP said it welcomes the “small victory” but considers the current count of reinstated guards “too few” considering the number of guards who were displaced.
“If he has no plans of giving much-needed and much-deserved cash aid for the workers and the people, it is better for Duterte to just resign.”
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers called on President Duterte to urgently address “the serious welfare issues of public school teachers that erode their capacities, health, and morale, and put education continuity in jeopardy.”
The pandemic only compounded the already dismal status of occupational health and safety in the country. Workers are either thrusted into work-from-home setups, forced to risk exposure to Covid-19 in their traditional workplaces, or retrenched altogether.
The recent string of harassment and attacks are meant to “silence workers in the lead up to Labor Day.”
Many dismissed security guards had been working for UP for at least a decade, with some serving for as long as 23 years.
Providing due social protection would have contributed to keeping people from leaving their homes but urban poor group Kadamay said the government’s financial aid has been “slow and too little.” They noted that the $20-aid per individual is a far cry from the $206 that progressive groups are demanding.
“Unionists are not terrorists. Terrorists do not fight for wages, decent conditions, and workers’ rights. Terrorists are those who intimidate, arrest, and kill people who stand up for justice and the common good.”
Amid increasing prices of staple goods and a stricter lockdown in place, workers group called the labor department's rejection of a P100-emergency wage relief petition “heartless.”
PAMANTIK-KMU has stated before that the Duterte administration is specifically targeting labor activists and unionists. These attacks, the group claims, intensified since the start of lockdown due to COVID-19 on March 17, 2020.
The Hanes plant in Laguna closed in October 2020 supposedly 'to prevent further losses,' leaving over a thousand of its employees, mostly women, jobless.
Government workers held a protest today, Feb. 15 against the rising prices of staple goods and services, decrying that their salaries have remained low.
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