Philippine union fights railway privatisation
By Reihana Mohideen
MANILA — The "bonanza sale" of public assets has been described as a new form of colonising the Third World. The Ramos government in the Philippines, with Ramos describing himself as the country's "salesman", has been zealously pursuing this central plank of its neo-liberal program.
The latest public sector to face the axe is the Philippine National Railways. In selling off the railways, Ramos confronts one of the most militant unions in the country — the Philippine Railwaymen's Union.
In its campaign against privatisation the union confronts the Ramos government, the US government and the World Bank. The union is a central participant in the newly formed Fraternity of Union Presidents (KPUP), which recently launched a strike campaign around tax reforms in Metro Manila and the nearby provinces. 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly spoke to the president of the union, Edgar Bilayon.
According to Bilayon, the plan to privatise the railways was initiated by the US and the Philippines government and funded by the World Bank. The "research" was carried out by the US multinational Price Waterhouse.
The Philippines government was "following the dictates of the International Monetary Fund that the government cut public spending. The Price Waterhouse report recommends maintaining a core work force of 1500 employees. We have been reduced to a work force of 2500 (from 14,000 in the '60s), and they still want to reduce it further. In 1991 the government did not provide any subsidies, which resulted in a lot of hardship for the workers. This was a part of a grand design to force employees to accept so called voluntary retirement packages."
Another part of the design was to run down services. Bilayon was extremely critical of the management of the railways. "The PNR has thousands of hectares of land assets. But the management has done nothing to develop these assets to support the services. The PNR also owns 300 fleets of buses, several delivery cars and hotels. All these assets have been depleted.
"The Philippines has a population growth of 2.3% yearly. By the beginning of the next century, we will reach a population of around 100 million. How can the government possibly transport such a huge population? Only a mass transport system, affordable to the poorest sectors of society, can deal with this problem. We put up a government so that it can serve the people's interests, so it can service the people without necessarily gunning for huge profits."
A central aim of privatisation, says Bilayon, is to smash militant unionism. "We know that the government and the military consider the railways a hot spot because of the militancy of the workers. The manager of the PNR is a military man trained at West Point in the USA. The military is currently recruiting and training PNR workers into their reserve units to turn them into military men. The purpose is to brainwash them and use them in the struggle against us. It's a covert plan to weaken the militancy of the union. For example, when we had a demonstration against privatisation in July, the management called up the reserve trainees and instructed them not to attend."
Given the forces that the union is up against, Bilayon has to look at the larger picture. "If we try to analyse the broader context of trade liberalisation and the dictates of the IMF, World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, these are all instruments of the big industrial powers, used to dominate weaker and poorer countries like the Philippines".
As for "free" trade, he points out: "It's not really an equal two-way relationship. The dominant power will always dominate. And the Philippines government does not assert itself, does not stand up and defend the interests of the people. There is no interest in the government to develop an alternative transport plan. We have tried to talk to people in various departments, but they are just not interested."
To illustrate this servile relationship, Bilayon gave several examples of Philippine products being banned in the US market. "They use these bans to pressure the Philippines government to get whatever they want. But can the Philippines say to the US 'No, we are banning your products'? Never. There's not a single instance that the Philippines has banned a product from the US. The government cannot say no to the US, the IMF, the World Bank. They are at the mercy of these institutions. Whatever they dictate, the government accepts."
According to Bilayon, traditional unionism is not enough to confront these challenges. "The broader framework always comes up in union politics today. The problem we face today is the need to confront the broader issues. The unions need to have their own alternatives and workers need to be united to confront these problems.
"The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the International Transport Federation have set up offices to discuss with the IMF and the World Bank the question of privatisation and its effects on the people. This may be helpful to get information about their plans, but it won't help stop privatisation."
Bilayon argues that community support is essential to fighting privatisation. "We want to establish the Philippine Railway Society, to make people aware of the importance of this struggle and to involve the community. We want people to join this society — professionals, street sweepers, concerned businessmen — to come together and work out an alternative plan."
Bilayon stressed the importance of uniting the workers' movement against these attacks so that an injury to one is seen as an injury to all. In this he sees the KPUP as a very important step in uniting and fighting the attacks that are raining down.