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The tax holiday is estimated to benefit the more than 700,000 BPO workers, who, BIEN said in previous campaigns, are working hard to the point of contracting illnesses for lack of sleep, toilet breaks and oftentimes failing to eat their "lunch" (midnight meal).
"It is unfortunate that another accident involving a faulty scaffolding happened only three months after the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) published Department Order No. 128-13 amending the rule on scaffolding in the 1989 Occupational Safety and Health Standards.”
“We have been told that an increase in the pay of government employees is not possible because of lack of budget. But given the pork barrel scam that implicated many legislators, that may be hard to believe now.” – Courage
“This move by the SSS leadership is not motivated by a concern for members of the SSS who are suffering from meager wages and contractual employment.” – KMU
It is not wages that make doing business difficult for small businessmen, but high power and water rates, trade liberalization and smuggling, and taxes to the government and kickbacks by government officials.” – KMU
KMU and Ibon research group said the P10 ($0.22) wage hike approved in Metro Manila is puny compared to what the workers' families need to cope with price hikes; to what the wage needs to regain after decades-long erosion; and compared to the growth in labor productivity.
Nearly 300 long-time 'casual' workers regain old jobs with fresh resolve to campaign for regularization.
“I was not the one who made you win but your collective action. Without it, it would be difficult to win the case.” -- Atty. Federico Bunao to workers
“The Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce is trying to deceive workers with promises of a better employment situation when the truth is that the country has been pressing down wages for decades but unemployment still continues to grow.” – KMU
Everywhere, restrictions on workers forming genuine unions have prompted them to do union organizing in an “underground” or clandestine way, at least, at first.
“When workers in Indonesia demand a wage hike, employers threaten them: ‘We would relocate to China.’ In China, employers threaten workers that they would relocate their factory to Vietnam. In Vietnam, employers threaten workers they would relocate to Cambodia. In Cambodia, employers threaten workers that they would relocate to Bangladesh.” – Asia Monitor Resource Center
See also: Indonesian workers battle high prices, low wages despite producing oil, registering growth rates
Asia-Pacific workers wage struggles to turn ‘formal’ rights into reality
The spate of increases is driving Indonesian workers to take to the streets, conduct strikes and file demands for wage increases.
“It seems that not even death can force the labor department to speak up against capitalists.” – Joselito Ustarez, KMU vice-chairman
Employees of the Metro Manila Development Authority filed a complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman against their administrator Francis Tolentino, who, they said, has continued to refuse to give them their incentive bonus and for the human rights violations he committed against union leaders and its members.
They (the driver and the command inside the factory premises) thought the workers are standing by the side of the street outside company gate.
Read also: KMU condemns Pentagon, police violence vs workers
One government employee was dismissed and the others were deprived of the salary increase that is due to them under the Salary Standardization Law 3.
The picketing workers asked: why did the labor department issue an injunction order against their supposed strike, when the company has locked them out in the first place? The workers said they are not on strike but in protest of their illegal lockout. Read also:Pentagon steel workers decry 'treachery' of PTGWO leaders ;
KMU slams arrest of labor leader in Pentagon skirmish
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