CLARK FREEPORT — The labor group Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) warned yesterday of privatization patterns adversely affecting majority of Filipinos that could be repeated in the pending takeover of the Clark International Airport here.
“Privatization is a bane to workers and the poor,” BMP said in a statement. BMP noted this was shown in the privatization of various utilities in the country three decades ago that has led to “electricity prices that are now second highest in Asia, water prices that are fast becoming inaccessible to the poor, oil and gas prices being dictated by only three market players.”
“There are new players in the oil and gas industry but their outlets constitute less than five percent of the total number of gasoline stations nationwide,” BMP chairman Leody de Guzman said.
BMP said that especially during the term of the late Pres. Cory Aquino, “economists had argued that government-owned or -controlled corporations (GOCCs) cannot efectively perform both their mandates — to operate as a profitable business and act as a regulatory body for the industry.”
“Before Aquino’s term expired, the Asset Privatization Trust had sold 230 assets with net proceeds of P14.3 billion,” De Guzman recalled.
De Guzman said “many of the GOCCs were privatized on the belief that profit-driven entities will improve the delivery of services, spur competition, free up government funds for other social services and plug graft and corruption, but the real motive behind it was the curtailing of the regulatory powers of the state in all economic activities and placing full reliance on the market economy.”
He said “conglomerates gobbled up almost all basic and highly profitable social services including water distribution (Metro Manila Sewerage System), power generation (Napocor), infrastructure (Manila North Harbor), oil refining (Petron), transportation (Philippine Airlines), banking and finance (Philippine National Bank), and many more.”
“It would be now safe to say that the privatization scheme and even its off shoot, the public-private partnerships (PPP) have been detrimental to the impoverished majority, with all the promises of efficiency and affordability an illusory past. Upon assuming power in 1986, Cory Aquino inherited 296 public sector enterprises and another 399 nonperforming assets which accounted to more than 25 percent of the country’s entire annual budget. In order to do away with the Marcosian legacy of inefficiency and as advised by the World Bank, she placed a great majority of the public assets wholly or partially for sale,” the BMP said.
No different
BMP said “the Duterte administration is no different from his predecessors. Upon assumption of power he immediately lined up the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp., the PAGCor, the National Food Authority, and the United Coconut Planters Bank for privatization.”
“Just recently, the Samahan ng Manggagawa ng Diosdado Macapagal International Airport or SMD, the sole bargaining unit of the employees of Clark International Air- port Corp. in their bid to secure their jobs as their company is forging a 25- year concession agreement with a consortium of private firms for the operations and management of both the old and new terminals, held a strike vote with only 13 voting against the strike.,” BMP said.
“The union’s fears and demands are not novel. The veil surrounding the privatization plan of one of the first projects under the Duterte admin- istration’s Build, Build, Build infrastructure program only adds to the legitimacy of their demand and grievances. At this point in time, the total paralysis of the airport’s operations maybe the only language their management can comprehend for them to come to terms,” the group said.
It said “the refusal of the airport management to negotiate the economic provisions under its collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for the years 2016 to 2020 is only fueling their doubts in CIAC’s sincerity to absorb the workers once the recently awarded concession agreement is in full swing in the next 180 days.”
“The history of public sector unionism has been dotted with an- ti-privatization struggles. There is damning evidence to prove that workers have suffered the brunt in these privatization schemes. It is now a matter of fact that the primary objective of corporate spin off s is to bust labor unions in order to take down costs by replacing tenured and unionized employees with cheap, contractual workers to make the project more palatable to investors,” BMP said.
“One thing for sure, CIAC is no way suffering from bankruptcy, debt, inefficiency, low profitability, or graft and corruption. The blatant dis- regard for labor rights and unjustified sale of public assets by the CIAC management and its holding company, the Bases Conversion Development Authority to feed the unsatiable appetite for profits of corporate vultures is reasonably a strikeable issue,” the group added.
“The Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) and its member unions and affiliates extend its hand in solidarity to our embattled brothers at the Clark International Airport in their struggle against union-busting bureaucrats and corporate greed,” the statement also said.
