22 July 2020 – PH oldest labor center voted — against the workers

By Marlen V. Ronquillo, The Manila Times, 22 Jul 2020

ORGANIZED labor during the Marcos regime was structured along the three major ideologies: right, center and left. On the right of the ideological spectrum, and the first labor center to be formed in the country, was the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines or TUCP. A towering figure in the labor front, the late Roberto Oca organized the TUCP as a labor center with pro-government leanings. The core membership of the center was drawn from the Oca-controlled labor federation based at the Manila ports and other federations with pro-government sympathies.

The center was represented by the Federation of Free Workers (FFW), which was organized by the Jesuits and Jesuit-trained intellectuals, to counter the dominant grip of the left on the trade union movement in the 1950s and the 1960s. The counterpart of the FFW in the organized peasantry was the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF). Juan Tan, known in the movement as Johnny Tan, was the public face of the FFW. The likes of Arturo “Bong” Tanco, the longtime Agriculture secretary of former president Ferdinand Marcos, worked as a FFW organizer in his youth.

The left’s labor center was the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), founded by a charismatic former Huk fighter, Felixberto “Ka Bert” Olalia. That surname — like Vitug or Barin or Lagman — had its roots in the western towns of Pampanga, formerly represented in Congress by former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. During the martial law years, it was the KMU that provided the unafraid and uncowering warm bodies in the street protests. Nothing fazed Felixberto Olalia.

The TUCP was pro-Marcos. The late Roberto Oca had the ears of both Marcos and Ka Blas Ople, then the Labor minister. But — and there is always a but — on matters that were strictly within the confines of labor, the TUCP and the Ocas never compromised the interest of labor. Politically, the TUCP was pro-Marcos and the labor center and its leaders were always at the Labor Day celebrations of the Palace as valued guests. But on the bread-and-butter, brick and mortar issues of labor, the TUCP set aside its pro-Marcos stand and stood for the interest of labor.

TUCP affiliates then — down the line — were not afraid to take in newly formed labor unions that did the perilous task of organizing labor unions in companies that belonged to the Marcos-Romualdez clans. I helped organize the Philippine Journalist Employees Union (PJEU) at the Kokoy Romualdez-owned Times Journal in 1982 to 1983. The PJEU affiliated with a TUCP labor federation and our fledgling union, formed at a very dangerous time for labor organizing and in a Romualdez-owned newspaper at that, got real support from the TUCP. The Times Journal later fired 238 PJEU members, a labor massacre that was not even reported in the papers.

Even during the dark days of martial law, when an issue was about labor, TUCP fought for the interest of labor. The TUCP never betrayed labor.

Until now, that is.

In the recent congressional vote on the ABS-CBN Corp. franchise issue, the lone party-list representative allowed to vote at the committee level was the TUCP party-list representative, one Raymond Mendoza . His vote was against the franchise grant, a vote against the more than 11,000 workers whose mass termination — it is now called a labor “bloodbath” — has started. Iconic TV names have been laid off along with rank-and-file employees. A vote against 11,000 workers who will be forced to look for jobs in the most hostile job environment in our contemporary history — a 17.7-percent unemployment rate, a labor participation rate of 55 percent and an underemployment rate that is also the worst in out contemporary history.

Why would Mendoza vote against the interest of labor, the interest of 11,000 ABS-CBN workers who are his natural constituents and base of support? What happened to the deft strategy laid down by the late Roberto Oca of demarcating labor issues from political affiliation, that loyalty to the country’s leader ends when the bread-and-butter issues of labor and the tenure of the workingman are at stake? Put simply, why did the TUCP, the labor center that took us in during the most dangerous time for labor organizing, sink this low?

What drained Mendoza of the will to stand up for his basic mandate — to side with the workers whose jobs and future are at stake?

The anti-ABS-CBN voters are dominantly professional politicians. They are pliant, always ready to compromise and to bend their principles. But Mendoza is theoretically from another level, a labor representative whose mandate is to fight for the interest of the workingman. In a sense, what Mendoza did was a betrayal of his party-list mandate, a betrayal of the basic principles laid down by TUCP founder Roberto Oca, a betrayal of the reason he was chosen to occupy a reserved seat in Congress via the party-list vote.

The TUCP, this is what rankles most, has a long history of fighting the good fight for the workingman, even in a very hostile setting and despite waltzing with the powers-that-be. Mendoza betrayed this long and cherished history for reasons known only to himself.

The TUCP rank and file should stage a mutiny. Or, at the very least, hold Mendoza accountable for his vote. In the name of the working class whose interest he abandoned and betrayed.