Cebu port workers hold 'strip protest' vs Osmeña

CEBU CITY - It does not come as a surprise that hundreds of port workers take to the streets today to mark Labor Day with a "strip protest" from the waterfront area to Fuente Osmeña minus a permit.

Women in their underwear staged protests at the City Hall, provincial capitol and Fuente Osmeña recently to dramatize their opposition to the environmental degradation caused by the South Reclamation project.

Port workers stripped to the waist are protesting today recent pronouncements made by Sen. John Osmeña which virtually "stripped them of their rights as workers," Sundita Sayson, spokeswoman of the Associated Labor Unions (ALU), said.

Osmeña's pronouncements virtually declared the end of the year as doomsday for worker-entrepreneurs of the Oriental Port and Allied Services Corp. (Opascor), the exclusive cargo handling service provider at the Cebu International Port (CIP).

The contract of Opascor expires on Dec. 31 this year.

Osmeña made it clear he would press concerned government agencies, particularly the Cebu Port Authority, not to renew the contract of Opascor which he tagged as the "milking cow" of the family of ALU head Democrito Mendoza.

The Council of Waterfront Leaders resented what it described as the "meddling" of Osmeña into union affairs, as far as the ALU-NUPP (National Union of Portworkers of the Philippines) is concerned, and into corporate matters, in the case of Opascor.

Osmeña, however, has remained silent on the issue after his recent tirade against ALU and Opascor.

The ALU-NUPP, meanwhile, said the cancellation of their permit to hold the protest action was politically motivated. Mayor Alvin Garcia, they alleged, is a "puppet of the senator."

City Hall canceled the permit, saying the Parks and Playground Office has an ongoing rehabilitation and beautification project at Fuente Osmeña.

Garcia offered instead, Plaza Independencia as venue of the protest action