Interview with former Senator Ernesto Herrera

It was good to have met up with former Senator Ernesto Herrera just a few days from Labor Day. Herrera, a pillar of the Philippine labor movement, is the quintessential laborite. I had not seen him for a while but I was keen to hear his views in a financial crisis that has profoundly affected labor with thousands of jobs being lost every day. Here was a good man who should be in public service but hampered to actively participate and lead because of a dysfunctional political system.

Was he running for senator in 2010? He could not say yet if he would but he was considering it. “Elections have become too expensive,” he said. He has been one of the very few politicians who have kept their heads above corruption. He is faced with the dilemma felt by those who are qualified and want to get into public service but who hesitate to be part of the politics of money and popularity engendered by the present system. It is men like Herrera who we are losing because of the enemies of Charter change.

Today, the man who is often likened to Apolinario Mabini because of a disability that has forced him to use crutches remains as active as ever in what he considers his first love — the labor movement. At the same time he has had a brilliant career as a legislator in the 8th, 9th and 10th Congresses, and there was a hint that he wanted to go back into the politician arena.

He continues his work in labor unions as the general secretary of the TUCP and teaches public finance at the Lyceum of the Philippines. Of the many things we talked about over lunch, two things stand out in my mind: one, he said he admired trade unions in Singapore and looked to them as models for what he wants to achieve in the Philippines; the second, that the labor movement can no longer confine itself to collective bargaining. The second follows from the first precisely because Singapore was able to redirect the labor movement to move in tandem with its development.

On the first, I must admit my ignorance having taken for granted that labor could even be formally organized and flourish in an authoritarian country like Singapore. So it was an eye-opener for me. To him, it was a model for organizing labor in modern times and as I was later to find out it inspired him to achieve the same for labor in the Philippines.

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It is not well-known that he was responsible for landmark reforms in vocational education and training that led to the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). This is the key to a more satisfying life for workers and ought to be at the heart of the labor movement. The country wants and needs efficient and competent workers.

There is a hue and cry about joblessness but none or little is said that we do not have enough qualified workers who would fill in the jobs. This should be the function of trade unions – to create systems to improve the quality and quantity of training for workers. That is what he admires about the unions in Singapore. It had a skill formation system, especially during the 1980s and 1990s.

I must admit that this is an aspect in the development of Singapore that I did not know. Too few know that labor was an essential partner of its development. No amount of authoritarianism would have produced the quality of labor to make it a competitive economy had it adopted a confrontational attitude between labor and capital.

Those who did focus on this aspect of Singapore’s development says “unions acted to support the state’s drive to upgrade the skills of the workforce.”

In addition, “they put pressure on employers to sign up to collective agreements which must include training.” Therefore unions in Singapore act both as agents and providers of training and education for basic and core skills. This may look like an easy job to do because we take for granted that workers keen on getting jobs would also be keen on learning how to do the jobs. Not so. Singaporean trade unions have had to provide considerable resources just to persuade their members to take up training opportunities.

This perspective is badly needed in these times. Often competition between companies is seen only from the perspective of capital and profits but unless we have an adequate pool of skilled workers, there is no promising enterprise to speak of.

I was not able to tell him then but this is a role cut out for him in these times. There is a dearth of that kind of thinking. What we have are legislators who uses labor for their political agenda. But there is a must to learn from the role of labor in Singapore’s success. This is a stark contrast to the development of the trade unions in the Philippines.

Trade unions in Singapore cover any association or combination of workmen or employers, whether temporary or permanent with the duty to regulate and promote good relations between workmen and employers.

The trade union movement in the Philippines is slowly moving towards the same objectives of promoting good industrial relations between workmen and employers. If we do not see many strikes in more turbulent times it is because of this new attitude.

This does not preclude negotiating just as hard to improve the working conditions of workmen or enhance their economic and social status. The bottom-line is to raise productivity not just for the sake of workers and employers but for the economy of Singapore as a whole.

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If this is the vision of former Senator Herrera for the labor movement in the Philippines, then he must re-enter the political arena. He is needed in the Senate halls to bring in a more serious perspective than political wrangling and infighting there.

Herrera’s work in the labor movement has been acknowledged internationally. He was the only Filipino member of the executive board of the International Federation of Free Trade and Union in Brussels, Belgium, from 1988 to 1992 and has been a consultant on worker’s education of the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

He was also the first Asian and the second individual to receive the George Meany International Human Rights Awards in 1985. (The first individual awardee was Lech Walesa of the Solidarity Movement, former President of Poland.) — Carmen N. Pedrosa, Philippine Star