The Unyon ng Manggagawa as Agrikultura (UMA) said yesterday the sakadas identified the respondents as their recruiter Greenhand Labor Service Cooperative (Greenland) and the Cojuangco-owned Agrikulto Inc. and Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) in their complaint filed before the National Labor Relations Office – Regional Arbitration Board (NLRC-RAB) in this capital city.
UMA said it is also assisting the sakadas file criminal complaints against the same respondents.
“The public is outraged by this practice of modern-day slavery by despotic kontratistas (labor contractors)… We demand immediate action from the DOLE chief and the Duterte administration,” said Danilo Ramos, UMA secretary general.
UMA assisted more than 50 sakadas or migratory sugar workers (MSWs) who were allegedly made to work like slaves. “They claimed that they were made to work long hours for slave wages as low as P9.46 a day,” UMA said in a statement.
The Hacienda Luisita was supposedly distributed to farm workers under the agrarian reform law, but vast tracts were retained by the Cojuangco family, while other areas already given out are being leased back on long term basis to the Cojuangcos.
UMA said that of the 36 sakadas it had rescued, four were minors. One of the workers remained yesterday a in a public hospital in Quezon City for treatment of head injuries sustained in the hacienda.
Twenty-four of the sakadas were indigenous “lumads” from the Manobo tribe.
UMA cited documents indicating that “as early as August last year, Greenhand was requested to supply Agrikulto Inc. approximately 1,000 migratory sugar workers to work as cane cutters for the coming crop year 2016-2017.”
“Workers were promised a daily wage of P450 but received even less than this amount for their weekly toil. Numerous deductions for food, provisions, work tools, and ‘cheating’ further reduced their pay to as low as P66.21 a week or P9.46 a day,” UMA said.
It also cited the claim of sakadas that they were made to work from 4 a.m. To 5 p.m. with an 18-ton daily quota for sugarcane harvest.
UMA said that apart from the 36 sakadas it had rescued, nine others recently escaped from Hacienda Luisita and were helped by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in their return to Mindanao.
“The hiring of sakadas who are made to endure slave-like conditions and wages is one of the worst forms of exploitation and contractualization, technically legalized and tolerated by government for years,” said UMA head Danilo Ramos.
“Government cannot make true its promise to end contractualization if the most horrible conditions we’ve seen in sugarcane plantations here in Hacienda Luisita and in the whole of Negros Island still exist,” he said.
Anakpawis Rep. Ariel Casilao, a labor leader from Mindanao, has fi led a resolution to initiate a probe of the case.
