Fr. Santiago “Ka Sanny” Salas, Spokesperson
NDFP Eastern Visayas (Region VIII)
1 May 2017
The Filipino people are in solidarity with the workers this International Labor Day. We recognize the working class leadership of the people’s demoratic revolution to overthrow the semifeudal and semi-colonial ruling system and attain national democracy and socialism. Towards this, the Filipino workers need to awaken, organize and mobilize in democratic struggles against almost four decades of imperialist neoliberal offensive. The current US-led Balikatan military exercise in the region underscore the continuing neoliberal agenda. Hence, from this day the workers in the region can thus show to the world their leadership of the continuing militant anti-imperialist tradition of the people of Eastern Visayas.
The Filipino workers suffer from the concentrated attacks of foreign monopoly capital and its comprador big bourgeoisie in the country to prevent their unionizing, job security and decent wages. Just over three percent of Filipino workers are union-organized. The imperialists and their compradors also have long used the Herrera Law and Wage Rationalization Act to enforce contractualization and other flexible employment schemes, deregulate labor standards, and do away with a national minimum wage as well as exerting their utmost to bring down wages.
In the past decades, the workers in the region thus suffered the steepest historical decline in their wages. In 2016. their nominal wage was pegged at ₱260 but their real wage was ₱170, while agricultural workers receive even less at just over ₱150. In 15 years, only ₱101 have been added to the nominal wage. The estimate for a decent wage in 2015 was ₱610 or more than twice the nominal wage.
Under the neoliberal offensive, the workers suffered the worst ever decline in their livelihood, democratic rights and political freedom. It is therefore imperative for all the workers in the region, regular and contractual, to organize themselves to realize their strength in unity. By doing so, they can wage various democratic struggles to restore the economic, social and political rights long denied to them. Through their strike movement, they can effectively demand wage increases and the ending of contractualization. They can also carry out a widespread movement of workers to bring the Duterte government to account for its failed promise to end contractualization.
The workers in the region must also struggle for national industrialization and genuine agrarian reform for economic emancipation from foreign investments and debts. Only by doing so can the Philippines end its economic backwardness and modernize to fulfill the needs of every Filipino. These aims in the NDFP-GRP peace talks must be supported and propagated by the workers.
Through their powerful mass movement, the workers inspire the participation of the petty bourgeoisie ha kasyudaran, especially the youth and students, and other middle forces in the national democratic movement. The democratic mass movements in the urban and rural areas led by the workers and peasants will thus be further invigorated.
The workers must vigorously oppose the current Balikatan war exercises in the region led by the US, the unequal military agreements such as the EDCA and VFA, and the positioning of US troops. These acts of US military intervention are all in behalf of US hegemonic and monopoly capitalist interests in the Philippines and Asia-Pacific.
We thus urge the workers in the region to be at the forefront in resisting the Balikatan, through such propaganda and protest activities as widespread discussion groups, patriotic assemblies and forums, caravans to the military exercise venues, and other mass actions throughout the month of US military intervention.
We call on the workers and the petty bourgeois intellectuals to go to the countryside and join the New People’s Army, support the agrarian revolution, and contribute to the building of democratic political power. Through their much-needed contributions, the people’s war can be assured of advancing to a new and higher level, and revolutionary victory and the socialist perspective realized.
https://www.philippinerevolution.info/statements/20170501-workers-of-eastern-visayas-resist-the-us-balikatan-lead-the-peoples-democratic-revolution-t
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