• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Labor groups in Negros Occidental are pushing for a wage hike, with amounts ranging from P150 to P750 daily, as they marked the International Labor Day yesterday in Bacolod City.
The General Alliance of Workers Association (GAWA) and allied labor groups are pushing for a salary hike of P150 to P350 a day for workers in Western Visayas, noting that present wages are now insufficient against rising prices of primary commodities and basic services.
Various labor groups under the United Labor Alliance Negros (ULAN) also gathered yesterday in Bacolod City to unite their calls for workers’ rights, including a P750 national wage increase, addressing privatization of public utilities, consumer rights, and the Marcos administration’s negligence of workers’ demands amid the economic crisis.
GAWA secretary general Wennie Sancho said they will not push for a wage hike if government manages to address ongoing inflation.
“We are facing times of economic crisis, joblessness, record breaking inflation and shrinking incomes,” he said, as he stressed the need for living wages.
What we are asking is for the RTWPB 6 to act on the petition on the spot, he added.
GAWA and its allied organizations also pushed for the scrapping of direct sugar importation by industrial manufacturers in the food and beverage industry.
In a statement, the National Democratic Front – Negros yesterday called for unity among workers in Negros Island in pushing for a salary hike and other benefits, as well as opposing labor contractualization, and demand for the implementation of an genuine agrarian reform program.
Kilusang Mayo Uno and its allied militant groups, including the National Federation of Sugarcane Workers, and Kilusang Magbubukid sa Pilipinas, also joined other labor groups in demanding for a wage increase, abolition of TF- ELCAC (Ending Local Communist Armed Conflict), opposition to EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement), and calling for justice to victims of alleged militarization in the countryside, as participants of the march displayed placards and streamers opposing privatization of local water districts and the proposed Joint Venture Agreement between MORE Power Corp. and the Central Negros Electric Cooperative.*
