PRELUDE TO WORKERS LIBERATION

By Mauro Gia Samonte

The struggle of 2,200 former Pantranco workers to recover back wages, retirement and separation pays has turned into a saga setting the stage for what truly is in store for Philippine workers. They won money claims amounting to P722.7 million, the biggest ever award won by workers in a labor case in the Philippines in so many years. The victory thus impacts upon the entire labor movement in the country.

Where the Pantranco workers’ case goes can be where the Philippine labor movement as a whole will.

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“The two decades fight of PEA-PTGWO and PANREA from the NLRC all the way to the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court simply proves that the workers can win a legal fight even under the current system of unfair labor arbitration,” declares National Labor Union President Dave Diwa, who claims to speak in behalf of the two Pantranco labor groups.

Those thousands comprise the membership of Pantranco Employees Association-Philippine Transport and General Workers Organization (PEA-PTGWO), a labor union registered with the Department of Labor, and the Pantranco Retrenched Employees Association (PANREA), an organization registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking to pursue its money claims against the defunct Pantranco North Express, Incorporated (PNEI) through the trade union process.

In 1993, the PNEI, a government-owned-and-controlled corporation formed to rehabilitate the sequestered Pantranco bus company,  closed down. The two labor groups filed claims for back wages, retirement and separation pays totaling P722.7 million against the company, and the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) ruled in their favor.

But it took more than a decade to get the award executed because the decision was appealed, first to the Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court. In 2005 the High Court finally upheld the NLRC decision.

Meantime, other creditors of PNEI, most of them big banks and financial institutions,  had been attaching all conceivable assets of the company so that by the time the Supreme Court decision was promulgated, practically nothing was left for the PANREA and PEA-PTGWO on which to execute their own attachment.

The two groups took to virtually scavenging into the inventories of assets of the company.

PEA-PTGWO President Jun Pascua says, “Unable to capture the prime assets of the company, for example, lots, trucks, equipments, etc., the workers clung to a sheet of then worthless papers called franchises that they had to activate, renew, sell, transfer and turn into cash.”

They unearthed 777 franchises corresponding to PNEI’s previous fleet of buses.

Though the franchises had expired in 1993, the Supreme Court final ruling had given the  labor groups enough leverage to petition the Land Transport Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) for extension of the lifetime of those franchises. Just this past May 21, the LTFRB granted the petition.

More than relief, more than joy, what the workers felt was euphoria. Nay, even ecstasy. For to know that what for such a long time you’ve almost given up as a lost cause now finally becomes real, the impact cannot be anything less than heavenly.

Workers never tire dreaming, and for the PANREA and PEA-PTGWO members who are all now into the twilight of their years, the good life stands forever attainable no matter that there’s just little time left within which to aspire for it.

The labor groups lost no time in moving to monetize the franchises. They dealt them with the Pangasinan Five Star North Transport, Inc., which operates the Victory Liner and quite a few other bus lines in North and Central Luzon routes.

The agreed amount was P100 million, covering sale of 489 of the attached franchises.

Compared to the total amount of P722.7 million awarded by the NLRC, that sum is definitely a pittance. And divided among the 2,200 members of the two labor groups, P100 million would give these workers around P50,000 each.

Divided further by the number of years it took for each worker to get that amount, the cash reduces to P2,500 – enough, anyway, for a family’s bare-existence weekly grocery.

In the final analysis, therefore, what the former Pantranco workers would get could only sustain their lifeline for 20 weeks more.

By any reckoning, this is tragic.

You struggle hard for 20 long years only to live for 20 weeks more.

But then beggars are no choosers, and if the choice for those workers is one between stop living now or live on for twenty weeks more, the choice is clear: life is the supreme principle.

And then again, that’s not the way marginalized masses reckon P50,000. For folks who haven’t held in their hands even a few thousand pesos in any single moment of their lives, fifty grand is big. Add a good dash of hope, that amount could mean a lifetime.

But it takes no great expertise at economics to know how exquisitely ironic PANREA and the PEA-TGWO must have felt in realizing that what they have been fighting for all this time is a meager 20-week extension of the lifelines of their members.

“It was won at such an enormous cost - to the life-long careers, fortunes and future of more than 2,000 now ageing, now jobless and now getting hopeless drivers, conductors, mechanics, helpers and dispatchers,” aches PANREA President Romulo Alfonso. “One driver, now 75 years old had worked with Pantranco for more than 30 years when it was closed in 1993. He had spent the best years of his life with a company who did not pay him his retirement and separation pay.”

And yet for all that irony, comes now Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) Secretary Mar Roxas declaring that the 489 franchises sold by PANREA and PEA-PTGWO to Victory Liner had long been dead and therefore the sale was illegal. The Roxas announcement to the media came out July 3, 2012 and since then Victory Liner, though it had begun paying on the deal, stopped further payment.

Imagine a patient in a hospital ICU. Remove the life supports and the patient dies. This is what Roxas did to the former Pantranco workers. Just as when they got the funds by which to extend their lifelines, Roxas withdrew them.

The PANREA and PTGWO members have been in the ICU of labor justice in the hypocrisy of Philippine democracy.

They’ve won more than P700 million award from the NLRC but when they came to collect, nothing was left because giant creditors had beaten them to the Pantranco assets –  despite the provision in the Labor Code that in cases of bankruptcy, the workers shall have priority in collection of money claims.

They settled for the morsels that were the Pantranco franchises, which they succeeded in dealing with a magnanimous transport entrepreneur, but when they came to collect payment, DOTC Secretary Mar Roxas declared the franchises dead and the sale illegal – despite earlier ruling by the Land Transport Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) that those franchises were active.

The Roxas decision should serve workers the lesson that at no instance under capitalism have they gained which capitalists have not given. True, workers exert so much struggle, including having to shed blood if need be, in asserting their so-called legitimate demands. But always, at the end of the day, it boils down to whether or not capitalists are willing to grant those demands.

Like salt rubbed on injury is the overall hypocrisy of Philippine democracy. Every law is so malleable and multi-edged that it is capable of being read every which way the judge leans to.  Hence though the Supreme Court ruled with finality the legality of the Pantranco workers’ claims and the LTFRB ruled valid the sale of Pantranco franchises to Victory Liner, Roxas overruled that ruling in a grand display of bureaucratic arrogance: “If members of the LTFRB have a difference in opinion, I will welcome their resignation.”

But of course, what would you expect from a man so steeped in cacique breeding, the scion of a clan cloaked with anti-labor refute?

Secretary Roxas is the grandchild of Don Amado Araneta of the Araneta Coliseum (now including Gateway and Araneta Center) fame. In 1970, workers of the Makabayan Publishing Corporation, one of a number of companies owned by the old man Araneta, formed the Katipunan ng mga Makabayang Obrero (KAMAO), the first-ever labor union to be organized in the history of the Araneta empire. The company terminated pronto the employment of this writer, who was the union president, prompting the union to strike. KAMAO eventually won the legal fight, with the NLRC declaring the company guilty of unfair labor practice. But before the court ruling could be served, the company had closed down – leaving nothing on which to execute the court order. 

In Secretary Mar Roxas, anti-unionism runs in the blood. It was no coincidence that he took a diametrically opposed stand against the PANREA and PEA-PTGWO. It was well in keeping with family tradition.

That, then, being the case, do the former Pantranco workers stand a chance of winning their case at the DOTC?

“There is no case yet,” informs NLU President Dave Diwa, “so it’s premature to speak of ‘chances of winning’”.

At any rate, Diwa is pragmatic enough to recognize that, in his words, “Trade unionism is not an instrument for liberation from capitalist exploitation but simply a means for workers to adapt and survive in a capitalist system.”

Diwa hits the nail right on the head. Survival is the key word for workers existence under capitalism. This cannot be truer today than in the case of those 2,200 who bore the agony of 20 long years waiting for meager work benefits by which to extend their lifeline on earth, only to wake up one morning realizing that the fight they have been waging has all been for naught.

What’s to be done then?

Diwa goes only as far as citing two options so far. One is congressional investigation into the Roxas ruling, expected to be made when Congress resumes July 23. That’s on the legal side.

 Another, a series of mass actions at the DOTC beginning July 11 coordinated with big labor groups like Diwa’s centrist National Labor Union and the militant Kilusang Mayo Uno. Still, that’s on the legal front.

Does he honestly believe the trade union process can achieve liberation of the working class?

“Trade unions are instruments to achieve incremental reforms but are never sufficient to liberate the working class from capitalist exploitation. A trade union in a capitalist system is akin to an insulin injection to a person in a diabetic condition. Like insulin, trade unions are not the solutions to a sick and debilitating society,” says Diwa.

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