Philippines: A Different – more fun – Labor Day Celebrations

Workers’ Family Day
It was Easter Sunday throughout the Christian World, and after hearing mass, around 80 families – all of whom are members of the ACIW – gathered at the Quezon City Memorial Circle for the informal workers’ association’s version of Family Day celebrations.

Meynardo ‘Nonoy’ Palarca, ACIW Secretary General, says that the gathering dubbed “ACIW Alay sa Kalikasan: Sama-sama, Salo-salo at Awitan sa Pasko ng Pagkabuhay” (ACIW for the Environment: Togetherness, Merriment and Breaking Bread Together on the Day of Resurrection), aims to fulfil three things: (1) To give members – typically on the bottom rung of the social ladder – access to free high entertainment and art (2) To show members a different, “lighter” side of the association that values the family on top of everything else; and (3) To encourage current members to remain actively engaged in the association, and to inspire new membership among the public.

Nearly 500 members from Metro Manila and surrounding provinces attended the gathering which is a first of its kind for the association. Children and young people danced and sang their hearts out in contests, the adults showed off their cooking and table-setting and decorating skills using environment-friendly materials, entrepreneur members laid out their products of bags and accessories (made of recycled materials), mushroom and silk-screen shirts, both young and old admired an exhibit of photos by Nana Buxana – an award-winning documentary photographer and filmmaker – that showed various workers’ everyday life, and everybody grooved to the chamber jazz and avant/rock pop music of the Vigo –who toured Denmark a few months earlier in a trip arranged by the LO/FTF Council– and Yangy bands.

But ACIW’s message in this different Labor Day celebrations on April 24th – which incidentally was also the International Workers Memorial Day and Earth Day – is not lost amidst the revelry. The association continues to work towards having a Social Pact, a tri-partite agreement among informal workers, industry owners and government that will safeguard workers’ right to decent and safe work, not only for its 18,000 members but for the 24 million workers that make up the informal sector in the country.

Taking off from an accident at a premium residential condominium construction project in the Makati business district in January 2011, where ten workers plunged to their death from the 28th floor aboard an overloaded motorized steel basket-like platform, the ACIW – in commemoration of International Workers Memorial Day – reiterated to its members the continuing sad plight of construction workers whose safe working conditions are not ensured by sub-contractors, and whose right to skills development and quality training for the betterment of their craft is not in any way helped by the Department of Labor and Employment’s inability to enforce Department Order No. 13, which requires all workers in occupations considered dangerous to be certified by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.

ACIW’s Nonoy Palarca cannot be more satisfied with the turnout and results of the Family Day. Members – who until then had not been very active in the association – pledged to renew membership, and many from the public who witnessed the gathering in the public park have been attracted to join.

And just like Christ, who rose from the dead on the day of Easter, with renewed vigor and enthusiasm the workers vowed to work together so that they may rise above their less than ideal condition presently.

Young People learn Unionism the fun way
May 13th was a day of dance, music, performances, art, films and never-ending photo sessions for young people who came to the Quezon City Memorial Circle to attend a cultural fair organized by the Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK), a national confederation of public unions founded in 1987, representing national government agencies, state universities and colleges, local government units, government financial institutions and government-owned-and-controlled corporations.

“Young workers are the most difficult to invite to join a union,” Annie Enriquez-Geron, PSLINK’s General Secretary, says, “And by holding this cultural fair, we want to shatter any preconceived notions – usually negative – that they may have of unionism.” Of the one million organisable individual government workers, only 25 percent have been organized. And while PSLINK lays claim to at least 21 percent of the 25 percent organized, the confederation does not stop to attract fresh blood into the union movement.

To make sure that the message does not get lost amidst all the frenzy, leaders of the confederation issued their “call to arms” on key issues – against contractualization, for women workers’ right to choice, and for youth workers to organize – in between sets of at least five bands representing almost all possible music genre (rap/chamber jazz avant pop/folk rock/reggae/spoof or punk rock), film showings, poetry reading, and school-based dance groups’ performances.

PSLINK denounces the surge in contractual employment in the public sector as without security of tenure, public sector employees are rendered defenceless against unscrupulous management officials. Moreover, there is seen to be a very strong link between quality public services and regular jobs. PSLINK calls for decent and enabling work environment for women so they would not have to join the almost 3,000 Filipinos – most of whom are women – that leave for work abroad everyday. It calls for improved reproductive health services –which at its present state is blamed for deaths of 11 mothers everyday –and the right to choice of a woman to various reproductive health methods.

“Our ultimate goal is to help create an environment that will enable and encourage excellent public service,” Geron says. By the end of the cultural fair, Geron hopes to have sent that message across especially among the young people.