PSNA

Philippine Solidarity Network of Aotearoa

Home

Kapatiran

Links

Contact Us

Archive


Issue Number 32, October 2009

Kapatiran Issue No. 32, October 2009


AN EXPOSURE WITH THE KMU
Lessons In Genuine Trade Unionism
- Luke Coxon


It had been 11 years since my last visit to the Philippines. At that time I was a student activist and was hosted by the League of Filipino Students. I attended the Peoples Conference against Imperialist Globalisation and rallies against the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and then spent a month in the Cordillera with indigenous communities and mine workers organising against the rapacious activities of transnational mining corporations. It was a life changing experience for me.

When I went to the Philippines I already considered myself a Marxist but my Marxism was something abstract that I had learnt from books. I had no concept of how Marxism could actually be applied in practice. This changed during my integration with workers, students, indigenous peoples and peasants organised in powerful social movements that were challenging the power of the State and corporations. I learnt that Marxism when applied to the concrete conditions of one’s own society could be an effective tool for organising the oppressed to bring about transformative social change. I came to understand what Engels meant when he said Marxism “wasn’t a dogma, but a guide to action”; it was a means to understand the world we live in, so as to be in a position, to be able to change it.

In 2008 I was very excited to be able to return to the Philippines after so long and this time was accompanied by two of my comrades from the National Distribution Union, Simon Oosterman and Ingrid Beckers. We would be hosted by the militant trade union federation Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) or May First Movement and immersed in struggling communities for three weeks. I also had the opportunity to join an international fact finding mission to investigate violations of human rights and trade union rights.

The NBN Scandal and International Women’s Day

We arrived in the early hours of March 8, 2008, it was International Women’s Day and Manila was steaming with protests. Large scale corruption in Government had recently been exposed through a US$329.5 million contract for a National Broadband Network (NBN) with a Chinese corporation. The President’s husband, Mike Arroyo and an Arroyo crony Benjamin Abalos, Chairman of the Commission on Elections  (COMELEC) were said to have received millions of dollars in bribes in the awarding of the contract. The whistle blower who exposed this bribery was Jun Lozada, a technical consultant to the NBN project. The regime had gone all out in an attempt to silence him, sending him on a paid trip overseas, but when he decided to return to testify he was kidnapped by State agents at Manila Airport who tried to convince him to keep his mouth shut. Jun still choose to speak out and was a very popular guy. During our weeks in the Philippines he seemed to be everywhere, at rallies, addressing various organisations and community groups.

As a result of Jun’s exposé, there had been widespread calls for Arroyo’s resignation and mobilisations were happening on a daily basis. People had the feeling that this could be the tipping point. But the Catholic Church hierarchy was not yet openly calling for Arroyo’s resignation and this was holding back a full scale revolt. The day before we arrived, a rally of workers from Southern Tagalog, an industrial area a few hours drive from Manila that was a stronghold of the KMU, had been violently dispersed outside the Department of Labor and the KMU headquarters had quite a few battered and bruised activists around. The International Women’s Day rally had been organised by the militant women’s group GABRIELA to protest against the corrupt, fascist, anti-people and anti-women Arroyo regime. The rally started at 9a.m. and went on until the early evening. This was a new experience for Simon and Ingrid, who were accustomed to our own rallies lasting only a few hours. In Manila long rallies are held out of necessity, as people need the time to be able to converge from the different metropolitan regions. You have many rallying points in the morning and everyone eventually meets together in the early afternoon. We spent several hours running and walking down EDSA, the main highway, to get to the convergence point. For one not accustomed to Manila’s heat and pollution it was a tiring and exhilarating experience. The rallies are very ordered (you run in formation) and colourful with many banners, costumes, flags of the different peoples organisations. At the convergence the numbers were about 10,000 and we were absolutely knackered. Passionate speeches were given - Ingrid delivered one on our behalf and we watched many previous cultural performances. The rally ended with the ceremonial burning of the US flag and an effigy of Arroyo.

The Murder Of Gerry Cristobal

The next day we had a briefing on the situation of the union movement by Ka Wilson Baldonaza the KMU General Secretary, who has died in 2009. Ka Wilson explained both the history of the KMU and the present situation of the trade union movement. The KMU is an anti-imperialist trade union federation and sees its role not only to struggle for the bread and butter issues of its members but also to participate in the wider struggle for social change. At home trade unions are generally conservative organisations; they more or less confine themselves to the economic struggle of their members and lobbying Government for piecemeal reforms. The KMU is different in that it is aligned with other people’s organisations in a struggle for radical political, economic and social change, and sees this as its primary role. The organisers live off the smell of an oily rag; unlike us here they don’t get a car and a relatively generous salary, in the KMU they get an allowance of about $NZ20 per week and that is to cover all their organising costs. When we asked Ka Wilson how any one could survive on this he said, “of course it is very difficult and some organisers have to also work part time, but if you are an effective organiser and the workers know your situation, you can rely on them to feed you”. The organisers lived in their communities in which they organised and lived and breathed the struggle of their union members, it was arduous and, as we were to learn, extremely dangerous work. Ka Wilson was explaining how the KMU had become a target in the Government’s counterinsurgency campaign, in which Leftist activists were being routinely disappeared and killed by State forces, when suddenly the reality of this slapped us in the face. Our briefing was interrupted with a report that a union leader from Southern Tagalog, Gerry Cristobal, had just been murdered. Ka Wilson told us this news and then calmly carried on with finishing the briefing. This left a sobering impression on us, the killings had become so common and routine, that you didn’t let them stop you from completing the task at hand.

The next day myself and Ingrid went on our prearranged exposure to visit factories in the Manila region, while Simon went with the Centre on Trade Union and Human Rights to investigate the killing of Gerry Cristobal and join the indignation rally against his murder. After an extra-judicial killing, the human rights organisations investigate and document the circumstances surrounding the killing, as the State forces (military and Police) are often complicit and hence cannot be trusted to investigate it. Gerry was a former worker and president of the union at EMI Yazaki, a Japanese semi-conductor company that employs 5,000 workers in Cavite. After the second attempt on his life he had stopped working at EMI-Yazaki and had become a full time union organiser of the Solidarity for Cavite Workers. Gerry was the third unionist from Emi-Yazaki to be killed and had previously survived two other assassination attempts. After the first failed attempt on his life Gerry armed himself with a pistol for his self defence; when he was shot the second time, he was able to shoot his would be assassin. Both were taken to hospital, the assassin was a Police officer, who wasn’t charged or investigated. The third attempt was successful when hooded men on motorcycles sprayed his car using Armalite rifles; the Police reported to the media that his death was “an incident of road rage”.

A Visit From Ka Bel

The next day we were honoured to be paid a visit from that giant of the Filipino Left, Congressman Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran. Ka Bel had wanted to meet and thank us for organising the protests against Arroyo when she visited our shores, in 2007. He said he was extremely happy when he was watching TV and the leading story was Dennis Maga in a cage outside Parliament. He told us that as a young man he probably would have done the same for a comrade. We spoke to Ka Bel about the current political situation in the Philippines and he expressed the view that Arroyo would try to change the Constitution to stay in power and if this failed it was quite likely that she would declare martial law. We gave him a NDU Union Power flag; his first response was typical of the self sacrificing man that was he. He told us we should really give it to the KMU; when we responded we had another for the KMU, he beamed up with a very large smile and said he would go now and hang it in his Congress office. It was with great sadness that we learnt of Ka Bel’s death soon after, in May 2008, aged 75 (see Kapatiran 31, October 2008, Special Issue on Ka Bel,
http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo31/Kap31List.htm - Ed.).

Organising Workers Joe Hill* Style

The next few days we spent in the Southern Tagalog region, with a KMU expansion union organising team. This was another point of difference with union organising in New Zealand. Expansion organising is organising un-unionised workers or sites, this team of organisers also happened to be very talented folk singers and they attracted workers through progressive songs. In the evenings when the workers had left their factories they would go to the squatter communities where most lived and start performing, the first songs would generally be working class love songs, which would gradually become more political as the night went on. They would engage in discussion with the workers to see if they could relate to the stories that the songs told and this formed the basis of discussion for the need for unionisation.

From this point they would invite the workers to join union education sessions and slowly start the process of organising of the union in the workplace. As many unions are busted as soon as management get a smell of that an organising drive is under way, it’s a very careful process of gradually building the union in a site until it is consolidated, only then would the workers declare themselves union. The workers needed to understand the risks that the organising would entail, as well as the limitations of unionism and the need for wider political and social change to effect real change in the lives of working class. As one of the organisers told us “we don’t offer false hope”. *Joe Hill was an American labour martyr and songwriter who, when he was about to be executed in 1915, wrote: “Don’t waste time mourning for me. Organise!” He is immortalised in the international working class song “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”. Ed.

Easter Mass In Cavite Jail

We met Amie Dural, the wife of Dennis Maga (who is now an NDU organiser in Auckland), and she arranged for us to go to Cavite Jail to meet political prisoner Pastor Berlin Guerrero. When Arroyo had visited Aotearoa in 2007 it was to attend an Inter-Faith Conference promoting dialogue between the different religions. The day she arrived in New Zealand, Pastor Berlin had been abducted by the military. Simon was surfing the Net and came across a story of his abduction and put out a press release highlighting Arroyo’s hypocrisy in coming here to promote interfaith dialogue while the regime had abducted Pastor Berlin and killed other church workers. In Helen Clark’s meeting with Arroyo we had heard that concern regarding his abduction was also raised and later Arroyo was grilled by the press over it. Arroyo was pressured to call Manila right there and then to order Police authorities to do something on Pastor Berlin’s case. That day Pastor Berlin was “surfaced”. We were told if we hadn’t done what we had Berlin would definitely be dead or still disappeared. Though alive he had been charged with murder relating to an ambush by the New Peoples Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines and was at that stage incarcerated in Cavite Jail awaiting trial.

When we arrived at the jail Pastor Berlin was giving an Easter sermon to his fellow prisoners. Then Amie told the story of what happened in New Zealand and this was greeted with a large round of applause from the fellow prisoners. I was asked to address the congregation, a new experience for me as I am not religious in the least. The prison itself was interesting, you had men and women imprisoned together, conditions were very poor and cramped but also seemed quite lax, prisoners would cook their own food and it almost had the feeling of a little village. The prison itself was run by a gang, who seemed to have more control over the place than the guards, they punished prisoners who broke rules and were even involved in collecting funds, to upgrade the prison facilities. Berlin had been able to raise funds to upgrade the showers. The gang had immense respect for him, he ate at the table of the gang leader; they had appointed him as an advisor and even offered to tattoo him with the gang motif, though he had declined the offer. Pastor Berlin had established a small medical clinic in the jail to treat sick prisoners and clean the wounds of punished prisoners and he established a church choir which he was also using as a means to politicise and educate the fellow prisoners. In September 2008 the fabricated charges against him were dismissed by a court and he was released. He recently testified to the UN Committee against Torture on the torture he suffered while being kidnapped by the military.

Mineworkers’ Struggle

We next headed to Lepanto in the Cordillera Mountains to spend time with the mineworkers’ union. Lepanto is a mining town high up in the mountains of Northern Luzon, scenically it’s a beautiful place; like the rest of the Cordillera it’s made up of mountain ranges with rice terraces cut into it. The town itself was something like I’d imagined the old gold mining towns of the beginning of the 20th Century being like. It was completely dominated by the Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company, which owned everything, including the workers’ humble houses. The workers worked long hours and it was dangerous and gruelling work; the previous year 16 workers had died and many more injured themselves. They got paid the equivalent of $NZ15 a day and this was only because the union had recently won a 100% increase after a successful strike. Workers would try to smuggle gold nuggets in their anus with the hope of getting a bit more value for their labour, we were told that they had become very skilled at this and a whole black market economy existed in the town for buying this gold. The town had problems with alcoholism and other “anti-social” activities. The union office was directly above a brothel, the organisers told me the company had purposely set up the brothel to try to discredit the union. For many years the mine workers’ union was a yellow union that was corrupt and in the pocket of the company, but a few years ago the KMU union, the National Federation of Labor Union (NAFLU), had won the union election and now 1,800 workers were unionised in three unions to cover the different sectors of workers - the Lepanto Employees Union (LEU), Lepanto Security Forces Union (LSFU) and Lepanto Local Staff Union (LLoSU) - all under the umbrella of NAFLU.

Soon after the KMU won the election the company tried to bust the new militant union (NAFLU) and the workers went on strike. They demanded a 100% increase and the end to contractualisation*, the strike was successful due to both the unity and militancy of the workers and some fortuitous luck. Torrential rain filled the mine up with water, which couldn’t be drained because of the strike; the cost to the company of the damage was so great that it agreed to the union’s demands. When we arrived the union had just completed another successful bargaining round this time without the need for strike action, but the company was refusing to implement what had been negotiated. We spent a lovely few days with the union and the workers and their families sharing our experiences of organising unions, and drinking quite a bit of the very potent local gin and red horse beer (beer mixed with gin). The focus of the union was not only in struggling for improvements for the conditions of work of its members but also to form an alliance with the local indigenous community in opposition to the expansion of the mine. The mine had polluted the Abra River, destroyed the soil of surrounding communities, the impact had been devastating and there had been a long campaign by the local indigenous communities to have it closed down. It was a very inspiring example of workers seeing beyond their own economic interest to embracing environmentalism and seeing their struggle and that of the indigenous communities as being one and the same. *Contractualisation means replacing regular workers with temporary workers who receive lower wages with no or less benefits. They do the work of regular workers for a limited period of time, usually less then six months and are rehired continually on short term contracts. Because they are so vulnerable they are often reluctant to join unions.

International Fact Finding Mission On Human And Trade Union Rights Violations

After visiting the Lepanto workers Simon and Ingrid proceeded to Sagada in Mountain Province for a bit of rest and recreation, while I returned to Manila to participate in the Union Network International Fact Finding Mission. UNI, the biggest of the global trade union federations, condemned the killings in the Philippines and said it wanted to arrange a mission to investigate the violations. Nearly all the extra-judicial killings of trade unionists have been against KMU unionists. UNI and its local affiliates did not have a relationship with the KMU. The NDU offered to use its own relationship with the Center on Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) and the KMU to organise the mission. Its main focus was on interviewing the victims of human and trade union rights violations in Southern Tagalog and Central Luzon.

In Central Luzon we visited the workers of the Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac. During their strike in November 2004 the military had opened fire on the picket line and 14 were killed. Eventually the union won its demands and ended the strike. But the same day that the settlement was signed the union president was gunned down while having a celebratory drink and things had not improved since. The sugar mill had been closed down and the Cojuangco family was attempting to drive the farmers off the land through force. In the days before we arrived, the military had been going house to house threatening union members and we had to meet them in secret. Part of the hacienda (plantation. Ed.) had been converted into an export processing zone; one of the companies that had been unionised was the International Wiring System (IWS). All of its leaders had been threatened by the military and feared for their lives and one of them has since been granted political asylum in Australia.

The fact finding mission concluded with a press conference that I addressed. In our findings we concluded: “A dirty war is being waged in the Philippines. Some factories and whole communities are being militarised, in a counterinsurgency campaign aimed at destroying the Communist insurgency by 2010. Trade unionists are being labelled “terrorists” when in fact they are the victims of “State terrorism”. They are being hunted down forcing the victims and their families to live in fear”. The mission noted that the primary responsibility for the violations rested with the Arroyo government and urged the Government to accept the recommendation of the Committee on Freedom of Association of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for a High Level ILO Mission to investigate the killings and the massive violation of trade union rights.

Spending A Year As Volunteer With KMU

I was absolutely exhausted by the end of the fact finding mission and like my previous trip 11 years ago it had also changed me. Despite the repression and hardship that those in the movement face they persevere in the struggle to build a truly democratic and just Philippines. You can’t help but be inspired by the determination, courage and commitment of those with whom you spend time. On my return I approached other NDU organisers to see if they would be willing to recognise this commitment and assist the KMU. We all now contribute a weekly amount to pay for the allowances of five organisers. I have also decided to return to the Philippines in September 2009 and spend a year as a volunteer with the CTUHR and KMU. The Government has now accepted the ILO Mission and when I arrive I will be helping with the preparations for it. With the recent attempts to change the Philippine Constitution, and the bombs going off in Mindanao, Ka Bel’s prediction of “martial law’ could well come true. I have promised Murray that I will write from Manila and keep you all posted from the ground.

Luke Coxon is an organiser with the National Distribution Union, in Auckland and a PSNA member. #


Go to top