land reform « Victor Villanueva

Posts tagged with land reform

April 27, 2011

Wage hike will cause bankruptcy, closures, retrenchment, unemployment?

Workers unload bags of cement from a truck at a construction site. Photo by A. Chris Fernandez, from The News Today - Iloilo City

That a wage hike is not possible and untimely because it will increase the cost of production in the country and will cause businesses to go bankrupt, to close shop, be forced to retrench employees, and that a wage hike will cause runaway inflation that will further increase the prices of commodities are big worn-out lies peddled time and time again by big businessmen, greedy investors and capitalists to reject any justified demand for an increase in wages and salaries. They are nothing but mere imagined threats and boogeymen.

The matter is quite simple for millions of ordinary wage earners. The minimum wage (P404 at the National Capital Region/NCR, much lower in other regions) is a wage that is far from enough to meet the basic demands of the family (average cost of living for a family of six in NCR is almost P1,000 a day), not even when both parents are working. It is a wage of starvation.

But since dogmatic neoliberal economists and the present government insist on harping bankrupt economic doctrines to frustrate any demand for wage hike, let us indulge in them in some rebuttals and statistics:

(1) Businesses in the Philippines can afford a P125 wage hike without going bankrupt nor having to resort to lay-offs or shutdowns

You only have to read the business section of newspapers to see how profitable big businesses in the Philippines have become the past years, earning record billions of pesos year after year. You only have to read the papers to realize how the government harps on economic growth and progress every quarter (Government even claimed that the economy grew by more than 7% last year). If such is the case, why are the masses getting poorer and hungrier (read: Hunger incidence up – SWS)? Where is the wealth going? Your guess is as good as mine.

Here are some facts from research group IBON:

IBON noted that the economy actually has more than enough profits to support workers’ call for a Php125 wage increase. Government data show that establishments in the country with total employment of 20 and over had combined profits of Php895.2 billion and 2.74 million employees, according to the preliminary results of the 2008 Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry (ASPBI) of the National Statistics Office (NSO). (from: IBON: Wage increase justifiable, possible)

Here are another set of facts from former Presidential economic adviser Joey Salceda:

[The Philippines' top 1,000 corporations'] total earnings amounted to P3.1 trillion of which P2.1 trillion were pocketed as dividends or earnings of the stockholders and only P1 trillion were re-invested (from: Economic growth in 9 years did not touch poor)

Economic growth is not immediately felt because the proceeds are held by corporations, [Salceda] said… “Whew! They never had it so good. All the while I thought the primal reason for business is to provide for the nation” (from: Salceda cites GMA term as most pro-business)

Companies are, indeed, far from being bankrupt. It is their excuses which are bankrupt!

(2) Companies only have to yield a cut in their profits to avoid the imagined threat of runaway or spiraling inflation

Granting an across the board wage hike of Php125 means workers will receive an additional PhP3,802 per month, and that employers will spend an additional Php49,427 per employee per year (assuming 13 months of pay). The total cost of the proposed wage hike will only be Php135.6 billion which, subtracted from total profits, will still leave establishments with Php759.6 billion in profits. This is only a 15.1% cut in their profits. (from: IBON: Wage increase justifiable, possible)

All businesses have to do is to accept a meager 15% cut in profits to prevent inflation. Inflation will only be caused if capitalists pass on to consumers the wage hike and the cut in their profits. There is no need for them to increase the prices of their products or services if they simply yield. (It’s not as if they will go hungry. Probably one less overseas vacation for their families, but it definitely won’t hurt them.)

This is essentially giving back to the workers the wealth that they create. No Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) gimmick can beat the just and equitable distribution of the wealth. Workers are not even asking for the dismantling of the capitalist exploitation inherent in the privatization of the collective mode of production. The immediate demand is simply a P125 across the board nationwide minimum wage hike which will provide economic relief to millions of families and which employers can very well afford.

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February 27, 2011

25th Anniversary of the 1986 People Power Revolution

It has been two days, but I still feel the need to post this belated entry about the 25th anniversary of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution.

One thing that is apparent in the public opinion is either disinterest, especially among the youth many of whom had not been born during those times (watch this video of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism to see how random ordinary students fared when asked about the 1986 Revolution) or disillusionment. The disappointment is real because indeed, the socio-economic and political conditions that spawned the uprising is the same. Twenty-five years later, we are almost no better than we were before (of course, I’m not saying this as a matter of experience, having been born after 1986).

Another thing that is readily apparent in all the government-sponsored revelries is the malicious and conscious effort of the ruling class to reduce the commemoration of the revolution into a middle class pageantry instead of recognizing the militant and collective execution of the uprising causing the overthrow of the dictator. In all irony, the message of the government in all the Presiden’t speeches and the mainstream mass media in many of their news stories is that there is no need for another popular uprising, and that the very acts that constituted the revolution, the militant and collective mobilizations of citizens into the streets, are now irrelevant. The revolution for social change, according to them, can now be executed through the government and through charity and tamed voluntary work.

Tonyo Cruz in his article at the Asian Correspondents made a similar observation.

The traditional politicians know People Power is a most potent tool in the people’s arsenal, along with strikes, boycotts, demonstrations and other mass actions. That is why they routinely tell us that People Power is passe, archaic, outdated. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had every reason to berate People Power. She knew full well that she was a legitimate target, considering the level of hatred her misrule had inspired among the public.

…The traditional political elite and their mass media cannot even make their minds on how to tell and retell the story of EDSA and the long fight against Marcos. The focus are on icons and shrines, on names and faces of media-manufactured personalities, as if the uprising could have succeeded with only them acting by their their lonesome. The official list of state-canonized EDSA heroes is relatively short and is a continuing insult to the PEOPLE who comprised People Power from 1972 until 1986, and from 1998-2001.

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February 2, 2010

Lakbayan 2010

Why should Land Reform be a major election issue?

A huge part of our population still depends on agriculture for their livelihood. 75%, or three-fourths, in fact are farmers and farmworkers. And for every ten farmers, seven do not own the land they work on.

Farmers who do not have their own land have to work on the haciendas and estates of landlords, and corporate farms of foreign agribusinesses. As a consequence, they do not own the harvest even if they did all the labor. They do not even have a say on how the harvest should be divided and almost all the time, the division is unfair.

Many of our presidents have passed so-called land reform laws, the latest of which is Cory Aquino’s CARP (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program). CARP was supposed to expire in 1998 but was extended. On the eve of CARP’s second expiration in 2008, peasant group KMP released a study which showed that from 1988 to 2008, the figure of 70% of peasants being landless did not change.

According to the KMP, the CARP contained many ‘loopholes’ which allowed landlords to either evade CARP or regain their lands from farmer-beneficiaries. One is the SDO (stock distribution option) of Hacienda Luisita notoriety. Instead of land, peasants are given shares of stock in the corporation owning the land. Land can always be planted with crops, meaning it is a steady source of income, or at least food. Stocks can only be exchanged for cash once, and most of the time, it has little or no value.

Another loophole is that the peasants have to pay for the land. This is unfair considering that in most cases, it is the sweat and blood of the peasants and their ancestors who made the land bloom in the first place. The decades of exploited labor by the farmers are more than enough payment for the land. Additionally, the landlords overvalue their land when it is being covered by CARP. The peasants have no say because only the landlord, DAR (Dept. of Agrarian Reform), and Land Bank get to determine the land value.

The KMP also criticized the CARPER (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms) which is brainchild of Akbayan and its Representative, Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel. The CARPER did not change any of the loopholes. It only added more funds for the CARP. Coincidentally, many NGOs allied with Akbayan receive CARP funds.

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June 3, 2009

Kabataan votes against CARP Extension

Below is the [DRAFT] Explanation of Vote of Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino against HB 1257 An Act Accelerating the Completion of the Land Acquisition and Distribution Component of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), By Providing Automatic Appropriation Thereof, and Addressing Major Implementation Problems of the Program, Amending for the Purpose Republic Act No. 6657, As Amended, Otherwise Known as “The CARP Law of 1988″ and Executive Order 129, As Amended:

I vote “NO” to HB 1257, I vote “NO” to extending the present Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

I vote NO because CARP extension would only create more opportunities for land owners and agribusiness firms to further consolidate their control over agricultural lands.

HB 1257 specifically provides for a “farmland as collateral,” an essential element of market-oriented land reform. Farmers who would avail of this provision may just find their lands foreclosed, thus resulting in the return of already-redistributed agricultural lands to the ownership of landlords and big agribusinesses.

I vote NO HB CARP extension because the present CARP has failed to stop bankrupt farmers from selling or transferring distributed lands despite so-called prohibitions on such transfers.

CARP failed to fulfill the constitutional mandate on agrarian reform program, as clarified by the Supreme Court by stating that “through the agrarian reform, the farmer at last will be released not only from want but also from the exploitation and disdain of the past and from feelings of inadequacy and helplessness; the farm will be his/her portion of Mother Earth that will give not only the staff of life but also the joy of living”.

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April 28, 2008

Family at Hacienda Escudero

Two Saturdays ago, to cap off my mother and my brother’s birthdays (which both fall within the same week), we went to Hacienda Escudero (formerly Villa Escudero) for a short day trip.

It was my first time at the estate-turned-tourist destination. It took us a almost four hours to drive down to San Pablo, Laguna / Tiaong, Quezon from Manila. We passed by the route crossing Batangas.

When we arrived at the place, we were toured briefly at the church-turned-museum. It looked familiar for me. No, not because I’ve seen it in the many postcards that it may have appeared in. It was after a few minutes when I realized this was where Wong Kar Wai shot parts of his film Days of Being Wild. Anyway the museum was basically a hogwash of various antiques and Escudero memorabilia, which I found quite interesting.

After the museum tour, we rode these carabao trolleys to the resort’s main recreation area, where we had lunch at the foot of a man-made dam with fresh water falling off the dam’s slope and streaming through our feet. If not for the heat of the midday sun, it would have been a very relaxing and refreshing lunch.