DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/1/2013
It is the Philippine labor movement's day today. It is once again an opportunity for our workers' unions and federations to make an impact with whatever demands from government or the rest of society they would wish to highlight.
In the statements we have read from this sector the past days, we have found reason to be hopeful. In the order of its major demands, the call for "cheaper electricity" is now on top of the labor movement's list, with "higher wages" coming in second. I believe this is the first ever May Day celebration that will see the ritual demand for an increase in the minimum wage come second to anything else — an indication of the severity of the electricity price gouging that has become the hallmark of the Philippine economy as well as an enlightened maturity of our laborers to discern the broader economic issue that affects the working class of the nation.
In the statements we have read from this sector the past days, we have found reason to be hopeful. In the order of its major demands, the call for "cheaper electricity" is now on top of the labor movement's list, with "higher wages" coming in second. I believe this is the first ever May Day celebration that will see the ritual demand for an increase in the minimum wage come second to anything else — an indication of the severity of the electricity price gouging that has become the hallmark of the Philippine economy as well as an enlightened maturity of our laborers to discern the broader economic issue that affects the working class of the nation.
This new order of priorities had been in the works since the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines and other major labor federations issued demands on BS Aquino III to personally step into the electricity overpricing crisis. The other major group, led by Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), which also issued a similar call for this year's Labor Day, has put the issue ahead of all others. Its chairman, Elmer Labog, declared that "High power and water rates, the flood of imported products, high taxes and government corruption… make doing business in the country difficult" before taking the BS Aquino government to task as the latter "refuses to address these issues and merely keeps on pressing down workers' wages." As a citizen and social journalist-activist relying on our small family enterprise to earn a daily bread for my advocacy and family, I appreciate the line expressed by KMU.
BS Aquino III did step out alright but on the wrong side of the fence, chastising those who press for the lowering of power rates while weighing his presidential authority on the side of the decade-and-a-half-old global corporatist energy and electricity industry privatization scam. Remember the gigantic swindle that was the Enron debacle in California that got transplanted to the Philippines with unequalled success compared to other Third World countries? That resulted in the "highest power rate in Asia," causing the country to be at the tail-end of foreign direct investments in the region, in stark contrast to the bonanza in the energy sector. Today, foreign power companies and local oligarchs are sharpening their knives yet again to feast on Mindanao's energy woes — much like how they feasted on Luzon and Visayas in the past decade — this, after BS Aquino blackballed and blackmailed Mindanaoans with massive blackouts.
To reinvigorate the Philippine labor movement, labor leaders must begin to harness the people's anger over the exorbitant electricity price into a popular and highly charged issue for the nation as all sectors of society are suffering. From the largest companies to the smallest sari-sari store (or at least, the few that still exist), the burden of high electricity cost is universal. In fact, the true driver of the Philippine economy, the small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) that provide up to 98 percent of the total jobs in the country, are reeling from high power costs. The health of ordinary citizens is being adversely affected by the high power cost as well, especially that of senior citizens, who would have to bear the scorching heat of summer as air-conditioning becomes a luxury too costly to afford. With all these insights, the labor movement will surely find renewed enthusiastic support from the people —something it had lost in the past.
While today 97 million Filipinos and their economy suffer exorbitant power costs, power companies enjoy yearly profit bonanzas. For the first quarter of 2013, the dominant player in the power sector, had 20 percent higher profits than last year without any significant increase in its customer base. In fact, this company had been piling up annual profit increases of up to 90 percent per annum since the 2001 Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) and the 2005 PBR (Performance Base Regulation) scheme of the Energy Regulatory Commission made the power business better than any pyramid scam around.
As Jojo Borja, a major stockholder of Iligan Light and Power, would repeatedly stress, "With Epira, power companies earned in six months what used to take them a year; with PBR added, it's down to three months to earn what used to take a year." Thus, poverty rates have worsened over the decade as the people's purchasing power has been sucked dry by exorbitant power rates. The SMEs have always gotten the short end of the stick in the minimum wage issue; the conglomerates, on the other hand, are hardly affected as their employees are largely above minimum wage levels already.
Labor leaders should know the kind of distortions that new minimum wage orders cause the SMEs, which have always teetered at the edge of survival with the onslaught of high power rates, as well as the other operating costs and demands of labor groups, i.e. trade dumping, high water costs, taxes, corruption, high financing costs, indiscriminate senior discounts, etc. Across-the-board minimum wage hikes will be realistic only after other economic inputs for SMEs are rationalized and balanced.
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