Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura
October 17, 2018
Farmers, rural people, especially children go hungry during World Food(less) day in a protest camp in front of the Department of Agriculture in Manila, Philippines. (Photo: Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas – KMP)
October 16 has been rightly dubbed by peasant groups as the World Foodless Day.
On this day, the Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) calls on the Duterte administration to address the root cause of hunger and poverty in the Philippines. In the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, about 3.1 million Filipino families or 15.5 million individuals experience involuntary hunger, an increase from last quarter’s 2.2 million families.
According to UMA Secretary General, John Milton “Butch” Lozande, “A significant portion of these families live in rural areas who get their livelihood from, ironically, producing staple and export crops that not only feed the country but the whole world.”
In sugarcane plantations, agricultural workers may receive about P30 to P50 a day due to piece-rate scheme or pakyawan. The situation gets worse during tiempo muerto or dead season that could last from April to August. During this time, workers earn nothing and have to find work through other means or in faraway places where they endure horrible working conditions.
In the vast agribusiness plantations in Mindanao, where a number of agrarian reform areas entered into Agribusiness Venture Arrangements, agrarian reform beneficiaries and small landowners no longer cultivate their own land to grow rice and corn. They have already lost control of their land to transnational corporations such as Dole, Del Monte and Sumifru through lease arrangements that pay them P808-P2,083/month.
Meanwhile, agriworkers inside these plantations barely get enough wages. These range from P200-320/day. Much lower are workers hired by Sumifru’s contracted growers. These growers only earn about P2,000 every 15 days from Sumifru’s purchase of their produce at P212.50/box. This is only a miniscule percentage of the massive profits generated by Sumifru, which earns about P38 million per day for exporting 19,000 boxes of bananas.
Not to mention, agriworkers have to endure underpayment for overtime work or working on holidays; termination for getting sick; lack of service incentive leave; and unremitted government-mandated benefits. They also have to comply with an “efficiency quota” working them to the bone while they are exposed to highly toxic chemicals like chlorpyrifos and Endosulfan. These chemicals have long been scientifically proven to cause cancer and other neuro and auto-immune diseases.
And when agriworkers fight to change this oppressive system that have kept them and their forbearers in a vicious cycle of poverty and hunger, the government unleashes its military, police and para-military forces to suppress any effort to organize and consolidate workers to assert their rights.
This was largely evident in the violent dispersal of Sumifru workers organized under Nagkahiusang Mamumuo sa Suyapa Farm-National Federation of Labor Unions-Kilusang Mayo Uno (NAMASUFA-NAFLU-KMU). The union has launched a strike since October 1 as Sumifru refused to forge a collective bargaining agreement with the union.
Last October 11, the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police together with Sumifru’s goons rendered its Red October as it violently dispersed striking workers, badly beating almost all of them. Not to be deterred, the union continues to wage their protest until Sumifru heeds its demands for regularization, just wages and better working conditions.
Thus, on World Foodless Day, agricultural workers in the Philippines strengthen their resolve to work together with farmers, fisher folks, women, youth, church people and other sectors to lead the struggle towards systematic changes that will finally put an end to hunger in the Philippines.###
