People’s Fighting Demands for Economic Relief and Long-Term Reforms:
Ensuring a Pro-People and Nationalist Response to the Global Financial and Economic Crisis
1. Protection and Promotion of Jobs and Immediate Provision of Benefits and Assistance to Affected Workers
a. Ensure that due process are accorded to all workers, including overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), who are facing retrenchment or dislocation to prevent unreasonable termination.
b. Review all the cases of displaced workers with the employer citing the global financial and economic crisis as the reason behind such termination to determine if due process was observed and the reason cited was legitimate.
c. Ensure the easy access of all workers to all the benefits accorded to them by their social security and insurance systems.
d. Ensure that all claims due to the displaced workers such as separation pay and other entitlements must be given without delay by their employers.
e. Provide immediate relief, including but not limited to, direct cash assistance grant to all workers displaced by the global financial and economic crisis.
f. Ensure that displaced OFWs obtain from their employers the immediate provision of full compensation including separation pay, payment for the unexpired portion of their contracts, and reimbursement of air transportation fare.
g. Stop the imposition of onerous and additional fees on workers leaving the country to look for employment opportunities abroad.
h. Ensure that all benefits due to OFWs from their contribution to the funds of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) are easily accessible and readily provided.
i. Stop contractualization and all forms of labor flexibilization schemes.
j. Stop the massive and systematic retrenchment of all public sector workers by scrapping all so-called “rationalization plans” such as Executive Order (EO) 366 and EO 102, and all privatization programs for various government agencies, government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs), and other public enterprises and institutions.
k. Stop the ejection of peasants from their land.
l. Provide substantial and immediate government assistance to farmers in areas hit by natural or man-made calamities that affected farm production.
m. Suspend the clearing operation of the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) against sidewalk vendors.
2. Provision of Sufficient Social Services
a. Provide sufficient social services especially public education (excluding military education), public health, and public housing by substantially increasing their national budget allocation and increasing public spending on them.
b. Reduce substantially the national budget allocation for the military and debt servicing and redirect the savings to allocation for public education (excluding military education), public health, and public housing.
c. Stop the privatization and commercialization of all public schools and state colleges and universities, public hospitals, and public housing to ensure that the services they provide are accessible and available especially for the poor and ordinary income earners.
d. Stop the demolition of urban poor communities and provide decent and secure housing for the poor.
3. Generating Resources While Easing the Undue Burden Caused by Taxes and Debt
a. Stop the automatic appropriation for debt servicing through the repeal of Presidential Decree (PD) 1177 or the Budget Reform Decree of 1977 and Executive Order (EO) 292 or the Administrative Code of 1987 to free up resources for social services spending.
b. Declare a moratorium on foreign debt servicing and review all foreign debts to determine which are odious and illegitimate and therefore shall no longer be repaid.
c. Remove the 12% value added tax on oil, power, water, and other basic consumer goods and basic services to lower prices and stretch the budgets of ordinary households.
d. Provide tax breaks for all minimum wage earners in the private sector and their equivalent in the public sector. Review all pertinent laws and policies to ensure that such tax breaks are appropriately enjoyed by targeted workers and employees.
e. Provide tax breaks and other forms of financial assistance to Filipino-owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to boost their viability. Various forms of fiscal incentives accorded to transnational corporations (TNCs) and other foreign businesses operating in the country must be redirected to Filipino-owned SMEs.
f. Re-impose tariffs on imported goods that have been cut back or eliminated under past and present trade liberalization programs and international trade agreements to generate revenues for the national government.
g. Implement a serious crackdown against government corruption, bureaucratic wastage, and smuggling that take away much-needed public resources.
4. Mitigating the Cost of Living and Controlling the Prices of Basic Goods and Services
a. Implement the demand of all private and public sector workers for a substantial increase in their wages through legislation.
b. Impose price control mechanisms on basic consumer goods and provide state subsidy to mitigate sudden increases in prices. Review all pertinent laws and policies to ensure that price control mechanisms are properly implemented and are actually beneficial to consumers.
c. Repeal Republic Act (RA) 8479 or the Oil Deregulation Law of 1998 and RA 9136 or the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) of 2001 to stop and reverse the privatization and deregulation of the oil and power sectors that have led to increasing petroleum prices and electricity rates.
d. Stop all new increases in water and power utilities caused by various automatic rate adjustment mechanisms under privatization contracts forged by past and present administrations.
e. Stop all new increases in mass transportation fares. In the case of public utility jeepneys, buses, and taxis, government must provide considerable assistance to drivers and small operators including, but not limited to, subsidies on petroleum and spare parts. Onerous and additional fees imposed by government agencies on the public transport sector must be scrapped as well.
f. Freeze the increases in tuition and all other fees imposed by public and private schools, colleges, universities, and other educational institutions nationwide. Stop the deregulation of tuition and other fees by repealing the Education Act of 1982.
g. Ensure the availability of affordable food, especially rice. Make available to the general public the P18.25 per kilo rice subsidized by the National Food Authority (NFA), which is currently restricted to holders of family access cards (FACs). The privatization of the NFA must be stopped and its mandate to ensure food security must be promoted, including its procurement of at least 25% of domestic rice production. At the same time, it must maintain its palay support price of P17 a kilo for palay farmers.
h. Review all relevant laws and policies to ensure that affordable, essential, and safe medicines are available and accessible to the people.
5. Ending and reversing the liberalization of trade and investment
a. Reverse all trade and investment liberalization policies to support and promote domestic production. All previously removed and reduced tariffs, quantitative restrictions, foreign equity limits, and other forms of control and regulation must be restored and strengthened to check the undue competition posed by foreign goods and capital on Filipino producers.
b. Stop the implementation of existing bilateral, regional, and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) such as, but not limited to, the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) and the various trade deals under the World Trade Organization (WTO). All ongoing negotiations for new bilateral and regional FTAs as well as talks for new liberalization commitments in the WTO must be immediately discontinued.
c. Stop all moves to further liberalize the investment regime in the country such as, but not limited to, House Resolution (HR) 737, which calls for 100% foreign ownership of land and resources in the country through Charter change (Cha-cha).
6. Orienting the Domestic Economy Towards Self-Sufficiency and Self-Reliance
a. Promote local industries by providing government support and incentives that will allow them to expand and create jobs inside the country.
b. Reorient the import-dependent and export-oriented design of light industry in the country towards the production of basic consumer goods as well as basic producers’ goods to meet the needs of Filipino consumers and domestic economic sectors.
c. Undertake a program for national industrialization including developing the country’s capability to produce industrial goods. Effective state control over strategic sectors and economic activities such as energy, raw material production, utilities, etc must be ensured.
d. Establish and implement a genuine agrarian reform program in the country and undertake rural industrialization to spur development and deal decisively with unemployment, poverty, and hunger.
7. Addressing the Roots of the Armed Conflict in the Country
a. Considering that poverty and marginalization are the roots of decades-old armed conflict in the Philippines, it is vital to address these issues head-on instead of the current militarist approach, including military operations cloaked under so-called poverty alleviation initiatives. There is a need to resume the stalled peace negotiations, including the talks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), as well as with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to allow discussions on comprehensive and extensive social and economic reforms that the Filipino people urgently need especially amid a worsening global economic condition.
