WORKERS’ APPEAL to Netizens (and to Anonymous Philippines)

WORKERS’ APPEAL to Netizens (and to Anonymous Philippines)

We join you in your continued vigilance for our civil and political rights and in your struggle against the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.

Impressed are we by your youthful vigor, boldness and creativity, that we seek your help in increasing online awareness on the following problems that beset the workers and the poor: (a) low wages, (b) contractualization, (c) high power rates and, (d) spiraling fuel prices.

These problems are caused by policies promoted by the very same lawmakers and public officials who are now assaulting the people’s right to free expression in the Internet. They are (a) the tacit cheap labor policy, (b) Court decisions which allow outsourcing and subcontracting and the loopholes in the Labor Code that promote contractual over regular employment, (c) the privatization of the power industry due to the EPIRA law, and (d) the deregulation of the oil industry.

To the Anonymous Philippines, inasmuch as we are impressed by your brazen display of technical skill and devotion to the cause, insomuch do we implore on you to seek legitimate avenues of dissent by using the Constitutional right to free expression to highlight “gut issues”, which affect the majority of the Filipino people. Real change will come by infusing the dynamism of cyber-protests to the practical movement of the working masses. Unite against a common enemy. Together, we will win! #

Philec workers staged their strike

Press Release

October 4, 2012

PHILEC WORKERS STAGED THEIR STRIKE THIS MORNING

Workers from Philippine Electric Company (Philec) staged their strike this morning after negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement has been deadlocked. The striking workers belong to Philec Employees and Workers Association (PEWA), and a member of the working class organization Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino - National Capital Region-Rizal (BMP-NCRR).

Philec has its address at Kaytikling Rd., Bo. Dolores, Taytay, Rizal. It is a subsidiary of First Philippine Electric Corp., a member of the Lopez Group, and is engaged in the manufacture of distribution transformers.

According to Rogelio Mira, PEWA 2nd Vice President, "We launched our strike after a deadlock in our collective bargaining agreement (CBA) to express our unity and to defend our right as workers. We are disgusted by the management’s strategy of closure after the failure in our CBA negotiations. Our proposal for a new CBA was countered by closure.”

Meanwhile, Gie Relova, secretary general of the BMP-NCRR, calls for workers from different workers organizations to support the said strike. “The workers union at Philec is already one of the few labor unions left in our country. The capitalist class continues to destroy these unions as their solution to the crisis of capital. This should not be. The workers should unite against these schemes of capital against the working class.”

For more information, pls contact Rogelio Mira at 0908-8967737, and Gie Relova, BMP-NCRR secretary general, at 0915-2792749