Clark International Airport is the latest battlefield in the Philippines’ fight against private-run dystopia
- When it comes to selling state assets, regardless of higher prices and harm caused to public employees, Rodrigo Duterte is much like his predecessors
The Rodrigo Duterte administration continues on the old and beaten track of its predecessors. Despite his rhetoric against the Aquinos, his economic policies remain adherent to the neoliberal doctrine of liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation.
The privatisation of the Philippine economy began with Cory Aquino, who was advised by the World Bank to take back Marcos’ crony companies that controlled water distribution, power generation and transmission, infrastructure, oil refining, air transport, banking and other sectors. The multilateral bank said the private sector could do better. They argued services would be improved, competition would lower rates and state funds could be allocated to other public needs.
But, three decades on, the Filipino people are in a private-run dystopia. Power rates among the highest in Asia; water fees remain inaccessible to the poor; the oil cartel has strengthened its hold in a deregulated industry, with new players in cahoots with the former “Big Three” in the determination of petrol prices.
President Duterte has announced the privatisation of additional state assets, including the Clark International Airport.
In response, the airport employees union held a strike vote in a bid to secure their jobs as their employer ventured in a 25-year concession agreement for the operations and management its terminals. The consensus was a resounding “yes to strike”.
The union contemplated the recent circumstances before the joint venture. The airport management refused to negotiate for a collective bargaining agreement from 2016 to 2020. Also, they are pursuing their employer for non-payment of workers’ benefits from 2011 to 2018. To the union, the privatisation of the Clark airport is nothing but a grand scheme to evade legal obligation to employees, particularly because the airport is not suffering from bankruptcy or insolvency.
The airport union drew lessons from other cases of privatisation, where the workers are the first to be sacrificed in the sale, in part or in whole, of a government entity. The new private firm or partnership should be supplied with fresh, cheap temporary workers – to draw investors.
Currently, the total paralysis of the airport’s operations may be the workers’ last card to force their bosses to negotiate reasonably.
We extend our solidarity to our embattled brothers at the Clark International Airport in their struggle against union busting bureaucrats and corporate greed.
Leody de Guzman, chairperson, Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (Solidarity of Filipino Workers)