Workers Give Aquino Perfect Scores On First 100 Days – KMU

100% barat sa manggagawa

When President Aquino took over as president, our living conditions were evidently at the lowest levels as evinced by an all-time high disparity of wage levels with the cost of living. Government data show that a family in Metro Manila needed at P1,000 a day to survive, while the minimum wage was at P382. Disparity in other regions was even worse.

The country’s top 1,000 corporations meanwhile earned a total of P3.1 trillion, according to former president Arroyo’s economic adviser.

Before Aquino took over as president, Arroyo’s last two years in office did not give workers any wage adjustment, and Arroyo’s entire term of office did not give workers a substantial wage increase, so we wanted change in our wages. But what we saw in just the first few days of Aquino was an instant continuation of the wage freeze policy.

He continued to use the regional wage boards as a means to evade subtantial wage increases. For his first 100 days, the following insulting wage increases were approved in seven regions: ARMM (P12 per day), Region XIII (P10 COLA integration, P10 per day), Region XI (P21 per day), Region X (P12 COLA integration, P13 per day), Region VI (P15 per day), NCR (P22 per day) and Region VII (P18 per day).

100% tagawasak ng trabaho

When he took over as president, Aquino said the first thing to be done is to study the statistics to apply the proper solutions. After 100 days, he reported improved figures in unemployment.

But we know the real story – the overwhelming unemployment that greeted his administration were not merely statistics, as more and more people suffered from joblessness, retrenchments, contractual work, and various attacks on job security. The “improved” employment figures were arrived at using the same old magic tricks of Arroyo that eliminated those who are not actively looking for work from the labor force, and included the vast population working in the informal sector – even those working only for one hour a week in the employed population. Included in the ranks in the employed are Guest Relations Officers, as even an NSO official confirmed in a radio interview.

Big business groups supported Aquino during the campaign period and the same business groups are the most vocal in giving rave reviews for his first 100 days. They must be very happy, as Aquino permits them to do whatever they want with their workers. In ABS-CBN, a company owned by Lopezes, one of the business clans closest to Aquino, 114 workers have already been retrenched to date, more than his days in office. This was because they resisted the grand contractualization scheme in the Kapamilya network, forcing those who have served the company for more than 20 years to assume a contractual status of less than three year-job security.

At the Philippine Airlines, 2,600 ground employees stand to lose jobs as Lucio Tan is set to outsource the largest departments of the flag carrier. Flight attendants are about to launch a strike to protest the mandatory 40 year-old retirement age and gender discrimination policies.

100% American boy

Just a few days after the conduct of elections last May, the US ambassador was among the first to congratulate Aquino for taking over the new presidency. The ambassador just being congenial and excited for the US has a lot to expect from and to rejoice with Aquino’s win.

Foreign debt service under Aquino’s proposed budget for 2011 amounts to a gigantic P823.27 billion. This is a 29.2% increase from last year, the largest increase in absolute amounts for debt payment in the country’s history.

The American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines also conducted a survey among their members last month. Seventy two percent of them expect to increase profits this year, up from just 42 percent last year. Seventy six percent cited satisfaction with the Philippines’ “availability of low-cost labor,” and 70 percent are happy with the “availability of trained personnel” in the country. American corporations are obviously pertaining to severely low wages in the country and vast supply of jobless people to exploit.#