Migrante International strongly denounces the violent dispersal, harassment and arrests inflicted by privately hired goons in connivance with PNP and AFP against striking Sumifru workers. Yesterday, the hired lapdogs drove away and brutally assaulted the members of Nagkahiusang Mamumuo sa Suyapa Farm organized under the National Federation of Labor Unions – Kilusang Mayo Uno (NAMASUFA-NAFLU-KMU).
In the Global Workers’ Rights Index, the Philippines is ranked as among the worst countries to work in. Up to now, the absence of a national minimum wage and job security due to contractualization exacerbates the plight of Filipino workers as they face threats, violence and intimidation in their struggle to assert their basic rights.
Many big corporations in the Philippines are emboldened by state sponsored violence and suppression of workers’ rights. Among big business entities guilty of oppressing workers is Sumifru, a Japanese company under Sumitomo Corporation which recently made it this year as one of the world’s worst violators of workers’ rights.
Through Martial Law in Mindanao and its de facto imposition in the rest of the country, the US-Duterte regime has been attempting to quash the labour movement to dismiss the legitimate demands of workers in favour of capitalist exploitation.
Due to Duterte’s systematization of contractualization and his neoliberal attacks through the TRAIN-induced price hikes and depression of wages, workers have found no other recourse but to mobilize and realize their collective strength in the struggle to achieve emancipation from oppression.
The regime’s refusal to address the plight of local workers has banished millions of Filipinos overseas and made them vulnerable to slave-like conditions. Instead of addressing the problems of forced migration, the US-Duterte regime employed Fascist methods to red-tag and suppress members of progressive labour movements in the Philippines.
No amount of Fascist repression will ever shake the conviction of striking workers in the legitimacy of their cause and advocacies. Migrante is firmly confident in the militant fortitude of the striking workers of Sumifru and all the other progressive labour forces in different parts of the country. OFWs and their families are fully united with all workers engaged in the struggle for national democracy.
Stand with Sumifru workers!
Support NAMASUFA strike! End Endo now!
