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Issue That Never Was, and Never
Will Be
Jan 2012
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Kapatiran Issue
That Never Was, and Never Will Be, January 2012
DOLE
PHILIPPINES:
Factory Militarisation And Union Busting
- Luke Coxon
Luke Coxon spent a year in the Philippines, from
September 2009, working as a volunteer for the Kilusang
Mayo Uno ( KMU ) union confederation and the Center for
Trade Union and Human Rights. Ed.
In April 2010, I spent a week in Polomolok, Southern
Mindanao documenting union busting by Dolefil (Dole
Foods-Philippines) with the active collaboration of the
Armed Forces of the Philippines and the fascist Alliance
for Nationalism and Democracy (ANAD) Party List. Dolefil
is part of the Dole Food Company, Inc., that produces
canned pineapple and juice and dominates the world
market. Most of the canned pineapple we eat hails from
Polomolok. It is a big and nasty transnational
corporation (TNC) that has utilised US government support
in its quest to monopolise the world’s pineapple
trade and colluded with local oligarchies in the
Philippines to grab land and exploit its workforce. Dole
has been in the Philippines since 1963 and has been among
the top 200 corporations in the country in terms of net
income, and among the top 50 in terms of gross revenue
with average exports of approximately US$100 million per
year.
The main adversary of Dole is the union Alang sa
Kalingkawasan ug Demokrasya sa Nasud-National Federation
of Labor Unions-Kilusang Mayo Uno (AMADO
KADENA-NAFLU-KMU). AMADO KADENA is the union of more than
5,000 workers. It proudly identifies itself as militant,
genuine and anti-imperialist. It knows that the struggle
of its workers on the shop floor is part of a wider
struggle against the subjugation of the Philippines as a
neo-colony. It struggles for improvements in the wages
and conditions of members, while seeking to raise their
consciousness on the need for wider transformative social
change, in order to make real improvements in the lives
of the working class as a whole. Dole has gone to
extraordinary lengths in its attempts to bust the
militant union in its midst and extract more profits from
its workforce. It hatched the most comprehensive,
well-funded and insidious union busting campaign that I
have ever come across.
Company Town
Dole is located in the small town of Polomolok, about a
20 minute drive from General Santos City. GenSan is world
famous for its delicious tuna and being the home town of
the boxing phenomenon and newly elected Congressman Manny
“The Pacman” Pacquiao. Polomolok is a company
town and completely dominated by Dolefil. Dole owns
virtually everything – the hospital, schools –
and the local population is completely dependent on it
for their livelihood. It is forever threatening to pull
out if it is unable to crush the militant union, seeking
to create divisions in the community.
Dole leases 24,000 hectares of land for its plantations,
with another 10,500 hectares farmed by peasant contract
growers; you have oceans of pineapples growing from the
town until the foot of the majestic volcano Mt. Matutu.
Near the top of the volcano is where a slice of Little
America has been created for the management. Life is
sweet at the top, they have swimming pools, a country
club; it is even cool enough to have log fires burning
year round. In order to protect its imperial enclave it
has its own security graciously provided by the Armed
Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
For the workers and community though, life is anything
but sweet. In Polomolok, poverty is rife and the farmers
and workers struggle to make ends meet. You have 5,000
union members that are regular employees, with above
average wages and reasonable conditions of employment by
Filipino standards and 16,000 workers that have been
denied regular employment and union membership. The
collective agreement stipulates that only 20% of the
total workforce can be contractual or non-regular, but
Dole hires both contractual workers and has set up a
number of grower cooperatives and claims that these
workers are not employees but members of the cooperative.
Contractual workers receive between 40% to 60% less than
the regular workers (about $NZ1 an hour), without any
additional benefits and are laid off every five months
while a worker who is a member of the grower cooperative
is paid only on a piece rate basis and works on call.
Dole Is Fixated On Busting Union
A struggle has been ongoing over the issue of
contractualisation since the election of AMADO
KADENA-NAFLU-KMU in 2001; the union was able to win one
court case and make 1,000 workers regular several years
ago and is continuing both legal action and organising
the contractual workers. Because of this challenge to its
exploitative practices, Dole has become fixated on
busting the union. It started its union busting campaign
at a time when the Oplan Bantay Laya 2 counter-insurgency
programme began focusing on the dismantling of Kilusang
Mayo Uno (KMU ) unions, through terrorising its leaders
and members. Throughout the Philippines, 98 union leaders
have been killed since the start of Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo’s presidency (2001-10).
Since the start of 2007, the AFP escalated its anti-KMU
campaign in Southern Mindanao (the area around Davao,
Compostela Valley and South Cotabato that are known
strongholds of the New People’s Army [NPA]). A
leaked “order of battle” – a military hit
list – included the names of the leadership of the
KMU in Southern Mindanao, and in rural areas, factories
have become militarised. Factory militarisation generally
begins with fora conducted by the military, the union is
accused of being a front of the Communist Party of the
Philippines and the NPA, the union officers (the majority
of whom are fulltime company employees) are accused of
being members and recruiters of the NPA. The union
members are told to disaffiliate from KMU and if they do
not they will be considered “enemies of the
State” and could be killed. The union dues will be
seized either by the military or the management and the
latter will cease to cooperate with the union. Military
intelligence networks are established in the factories,
either through recruiting spies or getting the company to
employ agents. Union leaders will be visited in their
homes and told to desist from their union duties,
disaffiliate from the KMU, be threatened and may be
offered bribes.
In one instance, in the Sumitomo Fruit Company, the
military faked signatures from union officers in a
document stipulating that they had disaffiliated from the
KMU and had affiliated with the Government-backed union
federation, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines
(TUCP). In some cases, union leaders have been killed or
narrowly escaped assassination. In the case of the
Sumitomo Fruits Corporation in Compostela Valley, it was
militarised by the 28th Infantry Battalion (IB) and soon
after in December 2006, four union workers were sprayed
with bullets while riding on their scooters. The target
was the union president Vincente Barrios, who suffered
multiple gunshot wounds but survived. A fellow unionist,
Jerson Lastimoso, died because of the attack. Vincente
took six months off work before returning to work at the
banana plantation in order to carry on with his union
duties. Threats to his life continue to this day and he
takes precautions to avoid being assassinated. The AFP
and its backers in the business community has even gone
to the extent of producing its own fictional feature
length film called Welga (Strike) that is screened before
workers at the fora. Welga tells the story of a worker
who joins a KMU union only to discover that the union is
controlled by the NPA and is striking in support of the
latter. In the film, the commander of the NPA has the
same nickname as the real life Chairperson of the KMU, Ka
Bong (Elmer Labog).
The anti- KMU campaign in Southern Mindanao has been led
by a Major Medel Aguilar and implemented by the 27th IB.
Major Aguilar serves on a panel of experts responsible
for developing the army’s civilian military
operations and is part of the AFP’s 5th Civil
Relations Group. In 2006, the Dole management met with
the AFP and discussed their mutual concerns about the
union and a comprehensive union busting campaign was
hatched. Management instructed the union leaders to
disaffiliate from the NAFLU- KMU or they would not
cooperate with them, the union leaders told them where to
go. In early 2007, Major Aguilar began vilifying KMU
officers, giving interviews to the media where he
publicly accused the local union of being a
“front” for the NPA and accusing the union
officials of being recruiters for the NPA and enemies of
the State. The military, together with the Dole
management, identified disgruntled unions members (many
former leaders in the old yellow union, prior to victory
of the NAFLU-KMU) and formed an organisation called UR
DOLE, composed of pro-company workers. UR DOLE leaders
work fulltime in the Human Resources Department of Dole
and have been accusing the union leaders of being corrupt
and demanding their impeachment for the last three years.
Constant Harassment
The AFP, the fascist ANAD (which is the party list
organisation backed by the former General Jovito
“The Butcher” Palparan) and UR DOLE have a
weekly radio programme to spout their pro-company and
anti-KMU propaganda and have been conducting fora with
the workers. Union members were initially made to attend
half-day forums and recently more than 2,000 union
members have been forced to attend a three day workshop.
They were paid and held during work time and the workers
were lectured on the evils of Communism, how the union
are “terrorists,” how great Dolefil is and in
order to have industrial peace and prosperity they must
affiliate to UR DOLE. Major Aguilar has personally
lectured at the fora and while armed, informed the
workers they – all of the members of AMADO
KADENA-NAFLU- KMU – are considered NPAs through
affiliation. The message is implicit: if you don’t
disaffiliate from the union, you’re a legitimate
target in the civil war. Workers told us that they left
the workshop feeling personally threatened. Dole has been
victimising known union militants who have been
dismissed, suspended and who are constantly harassed at
work. Their families have been denied medical treatment
at the company-owned hospital. The union office has been
under constant surveillance and has been visited by
heavily armed men (holding M16 rifles) wearing
balaclavas. The union leaders are in constant fear of
their lives and carry out their organising not knowing if
they will make it home at the end of the day.
The union busting campaign came to a head on February
13th when management and UR DOLE called a union general
assembly, forced the workers to attend the meeting, and
then proceeded to impeach the union leadership,
disaffiliate from the NAFLU- KMU and affiliate to UR
DOLE. Immediately, the Dole management recognised UR DOLE
as the union and refused to remit any union dues to the
AMADO KADENA-NAFLU- KMU. Since then, the Department of
Labor and Employment has on two occasions ruled that the
“general assembly” was illegal and that the
impeachment and election of UR DOLE is not valid and has
ordered Dolefil to recognise the KMU-NAFLU union. To
date, Dolefil has refused to comply with the ruling. In
the Philippines, corporations know that if they
don’t comply with the decisions of the Department of
Labor, nothing will happen to them.
AMADO KADENA-NAFLU-KMU has responded with organising
pickets, rallies and a community awareness and support
campaign. A case has been also filed with the Commission
on Human Rights and the International Labor Rights Forum
(ILRF), a labour non-government organisation (NGO) in the
US, has fielded a case against Dolefil with the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development or
OECD. Dole Foods is able to import its products duty-free
into the United States, under the Generalised System of
Preferences scheme (GSP) as long as it meets certain
labour standards. The gross violations of trade union and
human rights committed by Dolefil mean that is clearly
non-compliant. The union has not wanted the GSP removed
and has been hoping that Dole would stop its union
busting antics if it believed that the GSP (worth in the
millions of $US) was at threat of being removed. With the
help of the ILRF, it has been lobbying to have pressure
brought to Dole to clean up its act. To date though, Dole
does not seem to be concerned at all with this prospect.
One has to pose the question whether the US Embassy in
the Philippines is condoning the actions of Dole. It is
unlikely that such a strategic company would be
conducting its union busting campaign without consulting
the US Embassy in Manila. OBL has all the hallmarks of a
US-sponsored counter-insurgency programme, and there is
evidence to suggest that the US is knee deep in it.
At the moment, AMADO KADENA-NAFLU-KMU knows that the
principal means of winning its struggle will be through
organising its members and gaining support from the
community. Even if Dolefil continues to not recognise the
union, in February 2011, it will have to hold new
elections. The union knows that it needs to consolidate
its members in preparation for the elections and for the
dirty tactics that will be used. A lot is at stake. If
AMADO KADENA loses, then Dole will be able to exploit its
workers unhindered and the military will be emboldened in
militarising other factories.
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