Labor Day: Workers demand P125 wage hike

Hundreds of members of various militant groups and labor unions took yesterday’s Labor Day celebration as an opportunity to air their grievances through protests in major streets of downtown Cebu.

As early as 10 a.m., militant group members were already seen converging inside the Fuente Osmeña Circle getting ready for some series of activities in the afternoon.

One of them was Lydia Escudero, 43, public market maintenance personnel. She said she has been attending rallies for five years already.

Escudero is the breadwinner of her family. Almost everyday, she said her husband, Romeo, 53, struggles on how to budget the P241 she is earning per day from being a janitor.

They have five little children to rear. Her husband has no permanent job.

Escudero, along with other rallyists, have a particular demand - the soonest approval of the proposed P125 across the board wage hike.

Jaime Paglinawan, vice president of Anakpawis in the Visayas, told The FREEMAN that the proposed wage hike is pending before the House of Representatives because "lawmakers keep politicizing the bill."

Aside from an urgent salary hike, Paglinawan said his group is also demanding for an immediate stoppage of extra-judicial killings in the country.

Paglinawan lamented their fellow activists are often the "targets of assassins, secondary to members of the media."

Along with militant groups, workers of the Metro Cebu Water District also joined yesterday’s rally. They are opposing the proposed privatization and bureaucracy of the government agency.

The rally ended peacefully. Policemen from the Cebu City Police Office were deployed in the areas where protests were held.

Meanwhile, Joe Tomongha, chairperson of Alliance of Progressive Labor Visayas, yesterday expressed disappointment on the failure of government to meet the one million jobs a year and 5 million jobs target in six years time.

Tomongha said the government has even encouraged contractual and part-time jobs to "desperate jobseekers".

APL Visayas together with progressive labor groups and Akbayan had their protest rally yesterday along Fuente Rotunda going to Ramos Gym where they carried out their program.

APL said about 10 million Pinoys are unemployed this year compared to last year’s 9.6 million.

With at least 1.5 million new workers expected to enter the labor markets every year, the country faces the formidable challenge of creating this much number of productive and better paying jobs," Tomongha said.

Based on the labor force survey conducted by the National Statistics Office, the rise of unemployment reached one million in the last six years. While the underemployed rose to 2 million in the last two years.

Also, the survey showed that in 2005, the average job creation fell to 700,000 from 980,000 in 2004. — Gerome M. Dalipe IV, Correspondent; and Ramil V. Ayuman/MEEV