MONDAY is, again, Labor Day, a holiday. Like in other countries, our celebration of Labor Day was not given on a silver platter but was a product of struggle. What makes it more meaningful was that it was done under a difficult circumstance, when our country was still a colony of the United States of America.
With pressure exerted by labor unions, the Philippine Assembly passed a measure declaring May 1 as Araw ng Manggagawa or Labor Day. Since then, the day has traditionally been one for workers to demand higher wages and improved working conditions. It is also the time when labor unions showcase their strength.
The workers were among those who provided muscle to the struggle against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Interestingly, it was under Marcos that the memberships of two competing labor centers, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) and the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) were at their biggest and strongest.
In one Labor Day celebration I was in, thousands of workers and their allies were in separate march rallies organized by two major labor federations in Cebu at that time, the Associated Labor Unions (ALU)-TUCP and the Alyansa sa mga Mamumuo sa Sugbo (AMA-Sugbo)-KMU. When the two groups of marchers saw each other on opposite sides of the Osmeña Blvd. road separator, the noise was deafening.
I would say that was the time when government saw the strength of the working class in the country. But years after the Marcos dictatorship was toppled by the 1986 Edsa People Power uprising and bourgeois democracy was restored, so too the country’s labor unionism weakened. The first labor center to be hounded with factionalism was the KMU. It was followed by the TUCP years later.
The surfacing of factional strifein the labor movement seemed to coincide with the general weakening of unionism worldwide. Under the governments post-Marcos, the downward spiral was slow but sure. And it did look like labor leaders were not prepared for it. They continued doing the same thing even if times have changed considerably. The result is that Labor Day and the working class became an afterthought for the government and the employers.
I read an interesting article in theglobeandmail.com posted in 2012 titled “The Sorry State of Our Unions” about Canada unionism, which might as well be considered descriptive of the state of unionism in the Philippines. The article’s point? Even union leaders there were losing faith in the power of their unions. In an environment that has gone hostile against unions, this is unfortunate.
“There used to be a time when we had great respect from the public,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress. “But we’ve lost that. There’s this notion that unions are just out for themselves and not for society. You get that label hung on you, and you have to work to get rid of it.”
On Monday, government will offer the working class crumbs while labor groups will raise their usual demands for higher wages and improved working condition. I say that is not the way to go. Labor groups should instead look inward and solve the problems besetting unionism in the country.