Isaac Jabola-Carolus

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July 28, 2009

5. Maybe My Last Blog Post Ever! Or Maybe Not!

Greetings, fellow people. After three weeks of bouncing around and a dehydrating, rainy, but well-attended protest during President Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address yesterday, I am now finally able to sit down and write a blog post for your education and the improvement of my blog-writing skills. It has been approximately three weeks since my last post. Given that I only have three more weeks before wrapping up my time with KPD and ASSERT, there is a possibility that this will be my last series of posts. Anyway, wonder what I have been doing no longer! Here’s where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to, part one:

Olongapo and Subic, Zambales province

A Special Economic Zone: After a few final days of school visits with ASSERT, I swung around Manila Bay and headed northwest, to the province of Zambales! There I joined the KPD chapter in the municipality of Subic (according to a friend I just asked, a municipality is below certain income and population thresholds which much be surpassed in order to reach “city-status”). Subic and its Subic Bay neighbor, Olongapo City, were home to an enormous and troublesome U.S. naval base until 1992. As part of a national policy handling the fate of the former U.S. bases throughout the country, the Olongapo-Subic base was converted into an equally enormous and troublesome Freeport zone, i.e., a tax and duty-free area of land meant to attract foreign investments. Now host to dozens of foreign multinational corporations, the Freeport plays a central role in the Philippine government’s economic development plans; it is touted by the government as a symbol of the “great” economic “strides” the country has made during President Arroyo’s past nine years in office.

The foreign corporations are here not only because of the tax breaks, but also because of the guarantee of cheap and docile (i.e., exploitable) labor. To make the tax-free investment opportunities additionally attractive, the Philippine government relaxes labor standards in the Freeport and other special economic zones throughout the country. This means that workers face harassment (by management and sometimes the Philippine military) and termination if they try to organize in any way; there is an unwritten “NO union” policy. They receive six-month contracts (“contractualization”, meaning no job security), few to no benefits, and the provincial bare-minimum wage of about $6 a day. Furthermore, almost all workers are employees of subcontracted firms created by the parent corporations; it is quite clear that the function of subcontracting is to protect the corporations from liability in case of any legal trouble – of which there is usually a good amount.

Horrible, Horrible Hanjin: The KPD chapter in Subic focuses primarily on the various worker issues emerging from the Freeport and is particularly occupied with the largest operation in the zone – Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction, the 4th largest and probably most controversial shipbuilding facility in the world. Nearly all 17,000 workers at the Korean firm’s facility are actually employees of over fifty subcontracted companies created by Hanjin that each use Hanjin-owned machines and all have basically the same management (less than half are legally registered). And Hanjin certainly has reason to avoid any legal liability; in addition to the poor conditions faced by Freeport workers which I listed above, Hanjin workers face other mistreatment and hardship. First, working conditions at the shipyard simply aren’t safe: since operations commenced in 2006, there have been over 5000 accidents and 28 deaths at the site. Second, there are frequent cases of physical abuse by the management against the workers. And finally, the workers face forced overtime almost every day with 3-day suspension or termination as the alternative (amounting to 10-hour days, 14 days out of every 15), and occasional forced overnight/overday at only regular pay (two straight days on site at the minimum wage rate).

The KPD office in Subic serves as a walk-in support center for Freeport workers – and especially Hanjin workers– experiencing any job-related problems. It helps workers take legal action if they have experienced abuse or harassment, illegal termination, pay irregularities, or injury. It also serves as a headquarters for the unofficial Hanjin union which has over 3,000 signed members but is unrecognized by both Hanjin and the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment. KPD helps to organize the growing union and to seek its recognition as an official union so that management will be forced to finally listen. It helps that some of the KPD organizers in Subic are actually former Hanjin workers who were terminated after leading the efforts to form a union.

And what did I actually do in Olongapo and Subic?? First, I joined some of the KPD organizers in recruiting more members for the Hanjin union. Every morning and every evening, they go to the bus terminals where Hanjin workers are picked up and dropped off by the thousands. There we handed out flyers and spoke with workers to try to persuade them to join the union. After some time at the terminals, we headed to the worker “barracks”, or housing areas where there are high concentrations of Hanjin workers renting out tiny, dark, over-crowded living spaces. In the barracks, we spoke with workers to collect some information for KPD, and again, tried to recruit more union members. Despite the risks associated with joining the eventually-to-be-official union (i.e., losing your desperately needed job – remember, you are relatively quite lucky if you have a salaried job at all here), most workers who join are not so hesitant. They seem to understand that in organizing and unionizing lie their only chance of receiving more humane treatment, any worker benefits and protections, and more decent pay.

Nagtulong: I also took a quick trip to swing by Hanjin to see the place up close, as well as one of its neighboring fisherfolk communities, Nagtulong. This was my first introduction to the issue of demolition. Before the Hanjin facility was built, the location was home to a number of fisherfolk communities. Technically, these were squatter communities, in that the people were living on public land without government permission. So when the shipyard was built, they were forced off the land and their homes were bulldozed. This would have been legal under Philippine law if the government had assisted them in relocation – but this is the Philippines! So it didn’t. About 300 families were displaced and had to move further down the coast or up into the hills. Nagtulong is one of the displaced communities which is now facing renewed threats of demolition arising from Hanjin’s plans to expand its facilities. Half of the community’s population – about 50 families – has already moved further down the coast in anticipation of another forced removal. KPD and its fisherfolk wing have helped to organize these communities and assist them in protesting the demolitions. The people of Nagtulong, with KPD’s help, have actually filed a legal complaint and their case is currently pending.

This issue of demolition and displacement is not uncommon here in the Philippines. There are squatter communities of fisherfolk to be found in most coastal regions (which, in an archipelago, are all over) and of urban poor people to be found in most cities and municipalities. These communities are frequently threatened by commercial, industrial, and real-estate development, especially in more urban areas. I will write more about this later.

That is enough for this post. I’ll finish up with Olongapo and Subic and an organization called the Yokubari Foundation in the next, and then I’ll just have a week and a half left to cover!

Some of the people from Nagtulong who have already relocated.

Part of the new site where they have resettled.

Some of the men/boys fishing.

Others going out to collect crabs/shellfish/anything eatable.

The entrance to Hanjin. The place is a lot more massive than it looks. Huge cargo ships are being built and repaired beneath those orange things. Not the cones. The orange things in the distance. Their website actually has some pretty nice pictures: http://www.hhic-phil.com/

Posted by Isaac Jabola-Carolus at July 28, 2009 10:16 AM

Comments

Posted by: Bob Carolus at July 28, 2009 06:49 PM

Posted by: Bob Carolus at July 28, 2009 06:49 PM

Posted by: Nancy Marren at August 12, 2009 07:34 PM

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