Luisita, unions finally end labor dispute

HACIENDA LUISITA, Tarlac City — The management and striking workers of Hacienda Luisita finally reached an agreement yesterday, resolving the 13-month-old labor dispute and paving the way for the reopening of the sugar refinery.

A memorandum of agreement (MOA) was signed by Ernesto Teopaco, representing the management of the Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI), and Ildefonso Pingol, of the United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU), at Gate I of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT).

The agreement stipulates, among other things, the lifting of the barricades which the workers put up at the sugar estate’s Gate 1 in November last year.

Teopaco and officers of both the ULWU and the CAT Labor Union (CATLU) agreed to end the strike during the conclusion of marathon negotiations at the United Church of Christ in the Philippines in Quezon City last Tuesday afternoon.

Under the MOA, 52 of the retrenched officers and members of the ULWU will be rehired by the HLI, the Cojuangco-owned corporation which manages the 6,000-hectare sugar plantation.

The ULWU was also given the right to harvest and get the proceeds from the standing sugarcane worth about P30 million.

In addition to this, ULWU chapters in all the 10 barangays within the hacienda will receive P200,000 each as financial assistance for crop production, while plantation workers will still retain all their rights as stockholders of the corporation.

The MOA, however, stipulates that the picket would be dismantled only after the workers’ claims are paid.

Lawyer Vigor Mendoza, HLI legal counsel, expressed confidence that the workers would receive all their benefits by today.

Mendoza told The STAR that the CAT plans to resume operations today "to take advantage of the steady and competitive price of sugar in the local and international markets."

Meanwhile, the MOA between the CAT management and CATLU was signed separately at the Cojuangco residence in Alto, also within Hacienda Luisita.

Under the agreement, CATLU workers will receive a financial package of P21 million, including a P15 daily wage increase retroactive to July 1, 2004, a one-time signing bonus of P13,000, Christmas bonus and other benefits.

Mendoza said the CAT management would pay 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, and additional benefits which the CAT deems the workers deserve.

Sto. Tomas earlier ordered CAT to pay the workers a total of P8.8 million, representing wages and benefits due them prior to their 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 workers’ wages and benefits.

That day, however, CATLU president and village chief Ricardo Ramos was gunned down inside his home in Barangay Mapalacsiao, one of the 10 villages within the Cojuangco-owned estate. Despite this, the negotiations still proceeded.

The Luisita workers, however, insisted that the agreements merely resolved the labor issues, but not the land dispute.

"The signing of the MOA and the lifting of the strike are just the resolution of the labor issues," said Danilo Ramos, secretary-general of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP).

"We will still pursue the resolution of the land dispute, specifically the revocation of the stock distribution plan (SDP), and call for justice for the victims of the Luisita massacre," he said.

The KMP urged the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) to immediately release its decision to junk Hacienda Luisita’s SDP.

An inter-agency task force, in a resolution, a copy of which was leaked to the media, is expected to submit to the PARC on Dec. 13 its resolution favoring the scrapping of Hacienda Luisita’s SDP. — With Katherine Adraneda