About 250 members of militant labor groups under the banner of the United Labor Alliance – Negros gathered in front of the Bacolod City Government Center replica at the plaza in Bacolod City for a Labor Day rally to call for a P750 wage increase across-the-board nationwide and the lowering of prices of goods.
“While workers are clamoring for their immediate demands for a wage hike and other benefits, (President Ferdinand) Marcos is in the US on one of his trips, surely to forward his neoliberal agenda and to further sell off our sovereignty to imperialists,” Noli Rosales, Kilusang Mayo Uno-Negros secretary general, said.
“It is historic for all labor groups to unite here in Negros on Labor Day. Our broad unity is ever needed as the US-Marcos regime continues to pull us down with crisis after crisis,” he said.
Rosales said they are calling for a P750 wage increase because the recent increase in wages in Negros has not met the needs of workers reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“With the increase of the prices of basic goods, privatization of public utilities, and crackdowns on unionizing, these poor working conditions will only worsen. The Marcos-Duterte administration must answer for their negligence and anti-worker policies,” Rosales said.
Former Bayan Rep. Carlos Zarate said the Marcos administration should address the country’s economic crisis that is hurting the ordinary people.
SOLIDARITY FORUM
Meanwhile, a solidarity forum of the National Congress of Unions in the Sugar Industry of the Philippines, General Alliance of Workers Association (GAWA), Congress of Independent Organizations, and the Philippine Agricultural Commercial Industrial Workers Union leaders was held at the Negros Press Club to mark Labor Day.
The participants also called for wage increases and the scrapping of direct sugar importation sought by industrial manufacturers in the food and beverage industry.
They are calling for a P150 to P350 daily wage increase to address the unabated increases in the prices of commodities and the skyrocketing inflation, Wennie Sancho, GAWA secretary general, said.
They are also appealing to Pablo Luis Azcona, SRA acting administrator and chief executive officer, not to grant the request of manufacturers for direct importation, he said.
Direct importation will be a death blow to the sugar industry to the detriment of labor, Sancho said.*