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Caught in the globalised maelstrom: The CWU's sister union in the Philippines

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Caught in the globalised maelstrom: The CWU's sister union in the Philippines

Amid a food crisis, poverty and an anti-union climate, the Communications Workers Union (CWU) is helping its sister union to turn things around in the Philippines, writes James McGowan.


The ongoing crisis in global food prices has brought the Philippines onto the international radar once more. As the world's single largest importer of rice its long suffering people are already feeling exponential price rises, notwithstanding President Gloria Arroyo's recently convened 'food summit' to address the issue. Yet, the current upheavals are only the latest for a country standing square in the face of the storms of globalisation, run by a government determined to make it the most deregulated country in Asia.

It is within this broad context that Philippine trade unions fight for their members. Their country is much misunderstood in the West, despite being colonised in turn by Spain, the United States and Japan before achieving independence in 1946. I visited the archipelago in January 2008 as part of a CWU working group to conduct a feasibility study into how it might assist its sister union the Manggagawa sa Komunikasyon ng Philipinas (MKP) or Communication Workers of the Philippines. Fraternal relations between the two unions have been well established for several years.

The Philippine labour movement is disparate and fragmented, reflecting the country's turbulent legacy of colonialism and dictatorship with unions tending to be organised along company specific lines rather than being organised by sector. The MKP's membership, for instance, is recruited entirely from the Philippines Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), the country's largest telecommunications provider in the same way the CWU's largest tranche of membership is within BT in the UK. There are also numerous labour federations, each of varying political persuasions. MKP has aligned itself with Makabayan, one of the more progressive.

Just over 6% of Filipinos are unionised, of which only a small minority are covered by a collective agreements. The International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR) describes the labour situation as 'an anti-union climate manifested in harsh legislation, mass dismissals, serious and repeated police violence, and the arrest of union organisers'. On paper the archipelago's legal system provides for a right to association and a right to organise and collectively bargain. In practice the situation couldn't be more different.

The MKP was originally formed in 1939 as the Free Telephone Workers Union and stood firm against the martial law declared by President Marcos in 1972, which brought in a more restrictive code of conduct for workers. Charismatic General Secretary Pete Pinlac was elected leader in 1994 and has presided over a turbulent period with ongoing redundancies, contractualisation and the loss of members through Early Retirement Programmes (ERP), effectively buy-offs offered by management to workers and replacing them with non-unionised contract workers on lower wages and worse conditions. Pinlac has led a series of strikes and hunger strikes against mass sackings.

Our research found that contractualisation - casual or agency work - is the key issue for the Philippine labour movement as a whole. PLDT, for instance, has a policy of not recruiting permanent staff and only hiring temporary workers. The disparity in wages this has caused is stark. I spoke to numerous telecoms workers both PLDT rank and file and those working on contract. Bong, for example, is a telecom repair man in Davao with 15 years service. He earns P32,000 per month or roughly £320 while a contract worker doing the same job will earn P180 or £2 per installation, usually split between three other similarly employed workers or P60 or 70 pence per line. Contract workers are employed by agencies such as EM Amen in Davao and typically earn P2-3,000 per month or £30 -equivalent to less than 10% of that earned by their full time counterparts with none of the benefits.

Contractualisation has proved particularly problematic for many Philippine trade unions, including MKP, not least because most of them operate within a closed shop system. Consequently trade union membership has plummeted with MKP losing thousands of members from the rank and file over recent years. The closed shop system also hinders the union's ability to service the existing membership and acts as an institutional impediment to increasing future membership.

The challenge of organising casual workers has forced the Philippine trade union movement to reconfigure and refocus. For instance, the MKP has taken the lead in organising a National Telecom Workers Conference to include all Philippine telecom unions to establish a more collective and effective position against the onslaught of contractualisation. A working title for a possible unified sector union has been suggested by the MKP as "National Union of Telecoms". In addition here have also been some discussions about involving international telecoms union UNI in the conference.


The geography of the Philippines - an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands - also presents a major challenge for trade union organising and communications while financial constraints make it near impossible to employ full-time organisers. We found a lack of political awareness was a significant impediment to recruitment among contract workers and it was also clear that many workers were genuinely afraid that they might lose their jobs simply by even talking to the union. An absence of education among workers remains a further problem with many employees simply not knowing their basic employment rights.


The MKP and other Philippine trade unions undertake a significant amount of community and educational work beyond their immediate membership base. I met representatives from urban poor organisations in Cebu and in Manila, where I visited the urban slum area of Paralola on the city's sea front where extreme poverty and degradation were evident: although the smallest in Manila (with about 18,000 people), it faces some of the worst conditions. The MKP and its sister organisations work closely to alleviate some of the suffering there.

Moreover the Philippines is a major location for international outsourcing with 3-4% of the global market, an increase of 43% on 2005 worth $3.4bn. The country is favorable for call centres catering to the US market because of the availability of English speaking graduates with a strong affinity for American culture. Projections suggest that more than 500,000 jobs will be created in the next five years. This is an area the MKP are prioritising for recruitment as none of these workers are unionised.

The CWU will return to the Philippines shortly to map out how they can work with the MKP to tackle the poverty, contractualisation and disempowerment Filipino communication workers are confronting. The CWU executive is also currently considering how to assist the MKP in the future through solidarity work and logistical support. In the meantime Pete Pinlac asked me to send both his and the MKP's warmest fraternal greetings to the British trade union movement on this May Day. Long live international solidarity!

James McGowan is now ASLEF's Political Adviser. The CWU's fact-finding visit was part of a range of activities the CWU are conducting to design an international development project with the MKP. These activities have been made possible through a grant from the TUC's Strategic Framework Partnership Arrangement, itself funded by the UK's Department for International Development. This piece is a slight adaptation from one which first appeared in Liberation, Volume 51 Number 2 pp. 12-13.












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