Panel upholds revocation of Luisita stock plan

Farmworker-beneficiaries of Luzon’s largest sugar estate seem to have achieved another victory.

The inter-agency group tasked to validate the earlier findings of the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) Task Force Luisita has upheld the revocation of the stock distribution plan (SDP) of Hacienda Luisita.

The nine-member Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), led by Justice Undersecretary Ernesto Pineda, is expected to submit their approved resolution to the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) recommending the scrapping of Hacienda Luisita’s SDP on Dec. 13.

A copy of the 21-page resolution was leaked to the media yesterday.

The PARC executive committee is expected to decide on whether to support or overturn the IATF resolution through voting on the same day.

But a source said that voting already took place the other day and the resolution was approved.

The source added that among the task force members, the representatives of DAR, Department of Justice, Cooperative Development Authority and the Office of the President, and a farmer-representative voted in favor of the cancellation of the SDP, while the Land Bank of the Philippines voted against it.

The representatives of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the Department of Agriculture (DA) as well as the landowner-representative were not able to cast their votes.

The source said the DOLE representative sought more time before coming up with a decision, while the DA and landowner representatives were not present during the voting.

The IATF would reportedly re-convene on Dec. 12 to make its final review of the resolution.

Following almost two months of validation process, the IATF resolution found that the implementation of the SDP in Hacienda Luisita "failed to comply with and did not conform to the conditions and requirements of the law, rules and public policy."

Rapa Cojuangco Lopa, a nephew of former President Corazon Aquino and one of her spokesmen, said his aunt had no comment on the alleged revocation of the SDP.

Meanwhile, the last of the series of negotiations between the management and striking workers of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) took place last Tuesday afternoon, finally resolving the 13-month-old labor dispute in the sugar estate.

In a phone interview with The STAR, lawyer Vigor Mendoza, legal counsel of the CAT management, said the United Luisita Workers’ Union (ULWU) and the CAT Labor Union (CATLU) will sign their respective memoranda of agreement with the management today, bringing to a stop the labor strike at Hacienda Luisita.

An agreement was forged by CAT representative Ernesto Teopaco Mendoza and the officers of both unions last Tuesday night in the final leg of marathon negotiations held at the United Church of Christ in the Philippines in Quezon City.

Mendoza did not elaborate on the contents of the agreement, but said the CAT management will be paying the rest of the wages and benefits due its workers, as stipulated in the writ of partial execution issued by Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas last August.

In that writ, Sto. Tomas ordered the CAT management to pay its workers a total of P8,829,281.29, representing the wages and benefits due them prior to the strike on Nov. 6, 2004, whose violent dispersal left seven people dead and hundreds wounded.

Last Oct. 25, the CAT management gave the first installment of the amount to its workers.

It was then that CATLU president and village chief Ricardo Ramos was gunned down inside his home in Barangay Mapalacsiao, one of the 10 villages covered by the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita.

Despite the killing, the negotiations continued. Romeo Zarate, CATLU board member, said what is more important is that they have finished what Ramos had started.

Earlier, Mendoza said the CAT management requested the union to lower the amount due each worker.

The CAT management and the CATLU have been ordered to incorporate for the fourth and fifth year of their 2001-2006 collective bargaining agreement a wage increase of P15 per day for every covered employee.

The wage increase shall be retroactive to July 1, 2004. In addition, the management is also ordered to pay each employee a one-time lump sum of P12,500.

One of the points raised during the final negotiations, according to Mendoza, was the rehiring of some of the union officers who were ordered dismissed by the Department of Labor and Employment after the strike was declared illegal.

"The names are embodied in the MOA and the benefits due them will all be given not later than Friday," Mendoza said.

A financial package amounting to P21 million will be given to more than 700 CATLU members.

This includes a daily wage increase of P15 from July 1, 2004 to the end of the strike, a one-time signing bonus of P13,000, Christmas bonus and other benefits.

The ULWU, on the other hand, will receive about P8.2 million in unpaid wages and benefits for more than 5,000 master-list, seasonal and permanent workers.

Out of the 35 CATLU officers who were earlier dismissed, 34 will be rehired, while 52 of the remaining retrenched officers and members of ULWU will return to work, 37 of them as seasonal workers.