Contribution to the 15^th International Communist Seminar
"Present and past experiences in the international communist movement".
Brussels, 5- 7 May 2006
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org

CPP experience in organizing the workers for the revolution

The Communist Party of the Philippines

The Philippines is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, dominated by the US imperialists, the comprador bourgeoisie, the landlords and the bureaucratic capitalists. These vested interests exploit the broad masses of the people. US imperialism and domestic feudalism are the main problems from which the masses of the people aspire to be liberated.

The Filipino working class has grown significantly in number and experience since the later period of Spanish colonial rule. But its further growth has been stunted because of the limitations in local industrialization and emphasis on raw material production and lately, on mere re-assembly plants, new plantations and businesses in the grip of foreign monopoly capitalism. The Filipino working class suffers from extremely low wages and the whole nation suffers from lack of economic opportunity as a result of the repatriation of superprofits from the Philippines by foreign monopolies and loan payments to imperialist banks.

At this period of Philippine history, the old type of national democratic revolution no longer suffices. The era of imperialism has invalidated the leadership of the bourgeoisie. This was clearly demonstrated when the liberal bourgeois leadership of the 1896 revolution capitulated upon the armed conquest of the Philippines by US imperialism.

The class leadership in the Philippine revolution is now in the hands of the working class. The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is the most advanced detachment of the Filipino working class leading the Philippine revolution forward.

There is only one road that the working class under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines must take. It is the road of armed revolution to smash the armed counterrevolution that preserves foreign and feudal oppression in the Philippines.

In waging armed revolution, the working class relies mainly on the mass support of its closest ally, the peasantry. The peasantry is the main force of the people's democratic revolution. The peasant struggle for land is the main democratic content of the present stage of the Philippine revolution.

The working class and the Communist Party of the Philippines cannot accomplish both democracy and socialism at one blow. The Party must first achieve a new type of national democratic revolution, a people's democratic revolution in the concrete semi-feudal and semi-colonial conditions of the Philippines before reaching the stage of socialist revolution. Socialism cannot be immediately achieved when the Filipino people under the leadership of the working class still have to liberate themselves from foreign and feudal oppression.

The immediate general program of the Filipino people and the Communist Party of the Philippines is a people's democratic revolution and the long term maximum program is socialism.

The revolutionary armed struggle is the principal form of struggle because it answers the central question of the revolution which is the seizure of power. It is the principal method for smashing the bureaucratic-military machinery of the counterrevolutionary state. But the legal forms of struggle are important and indispensable even if these are secondary inasmuch as they are not the direct means for seizing political power.

The CPP could be re-established in 1968 and could launch the armed revolution in 1969 because since 1961 the proletarian revolutionaries had already developed the urban-based legal mass movement, with an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal character. Before the '60s there was a decade of intense reaction which stifled the urban legal mass movement and isolated the remnants of the armed revolutionary movement which had been defeated in the early '50s.

The legal democratic mass movement from 1961 to 1968 enabled the newly re-established party to become nation-wide and deeply rooted among the masses. Since 1969, the CPP has co-ordinated the urban-based legal democratic mass movement and the rural-based armed revolutionary movement. Workers and educated youth have gone to the countryside to serve in the people's army. They have been indispensable in strengthening the revolutionary forces in the countryside.

A strong legal mass movement in the cities can provide vital support to the revolutionary forces in the countryside and prevent their isolation. In turn, the revolutionary forces in the countryside inspire and support the legal mass movement. The existence of the people's army assures the people in the cities and in the whole country that they have the instrument with which to fight and defeat the enemy.

After the proletarian revolutionaries launched the revolutionary armed struggle as the principal form of struggle in 1969, they never ceased to pay attention to the necessity and due importance of further developing the urban legal mass movement. The process of developing the urban legal mass movement, drawing from it the cadres and most advanced mass activists from the ranks of workers and educated youth and deploying an increasing number of them to the countryside continued.

Martial rule could not fully suppress the revolutionary forces in the urban areas because they had grown in strength along the correct ideological and political line. Many of the legal cadres and mass activists glided into the urban underground or joined the revolutionary forces in the countryside.

Even as it is secondary to the armed struggle, with regard to the question of seizing political power, the urban-based legal mass movement performs functions without which the national-democratic revolution and the armed struggle can be weakened or even defeated. It spreads the message of protest and revolution to the people on a nation-wide scale ahead of the capacity of the units of the people's army to do so. It trains and tempers the legal cadres and mass activists and inspires them to further participate in the revolutionary mass movement, up to joining the armed struggle in the countryside.

Situation of the Filipino Working Class

Contrary to the claims of the reactionary government of 7.1% unemployment--a preposterous claim for an underdeveloped country to have less unemployment than a highly developed country like France that has 10% unemployment-- real unemployment runs at 40% of the labor force. For those who have jobs, wages remain low while prices of commodities and public services are constantly on the rise.

Workers’ rights to collectively bargain and to strike are curtailed. The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) often takes the side of the capitalists in labor disputes. Companies routinely resort to union busting. The police, military and company goons are employed to violently disperse workers at the picketline. The courts are used to file criminal charges against striking workers and their leaders.

With the so-called Wage Rationalization Act, wages are pegged at a level that can hardly meet even the workers’ basic survival needs. The average wage in Metro Manila is 5 euros per day. This is very much lower when compared to the cost of living for a family of six of 11 euros per day. In the electronics, garments and textile industries where almost 90% of the workers are women, the wages are very low. In Howung Garments for instance, the daily rate is 1.60 euros per day.

The big capitalists maximize their profits by enforcing speed-ups, by lengthening the working hours and by setting excessively high production quotas on every worker. The reactionary government has virtually granted business firms permission to violate the 8-hour working day through Department Advisory No. 02 issued by the DOLE that provides a legal stature to the “compressed workweek" policy. This policy allows employers to force their workers to render more than the regular 8-hour workday. Worse, the workers are not paid the overtime premium and night shift differential pay for the time in excess of the usual 8 hour-day.

On August 2, 2004, Reynaldo Aguba, 29 years old and a contractual worker in Masuda Philippines, died after working continuously for 32 hours. The doctor said he died of exhaustion from work. Masuda is engaged in the production of auto parts for companies such as Honda Motors, Nissan Motors, Isuzu and Toyota Motors – all Japanese car companies. No investigation was made and workers were told to keep mum about the incident or lose their jobs.

In Fashion House Garments, 1,200 workers (95% of whom are women) work as permanent contractuals. They are often forced to work overtime for 24 hours. The management gives them Bonamine—an anti- dizziness drug often used by travelers—when workers complain of dizziness and to make them overcome fatigue and keep them awake.

In the Special Economic Zones, the "No union, no strike policy" is implemented. The so-called tripartite system of government, capital and labor is used to promote the policy of cheap and docile labor on the tedious premise that this would attract foreign investments.

Department Order No.57-04 from the DOLE allows for the “voluntary" observance of labor standards by business firms. This has paved the way for labor contractualization that violates the right to security of tenure, mandatory overtime that has made 12-hours workday the norm, non-implementation of the minimum wage and many others. The government has also practically abolished the workers’ right to strike. It constantly employs the anti-worker “Assumption of Jurisdiction or AJ" provision of the Labor Code where the DOLE assumes jurisdiction over labor disputes to stop all strikes.

The job security and wage conditions of all regular workers are grossly undermined with the approval and encouragement given by the "labor code" for employers to take in "apprentices" and "learners" at wages far below the minimum wage and farm out aspects of an enterprise to contractors who are not bound by the minimum wage law. Regular workers are being forced to resign or retire early only to be replaced by lower-paid workers. For exploiting "apprentices" and "learners", the big capitalists are even given tax deductions as incentives.

Fascist repression is on the rise. In 2005, a total of 179 political killings have been documented by human rights groups, excluding 52 targets who survived assassination attempts. Thirty-one (31) of those killed were union leaders and urban poor community organizers. One prominent victim was Diosdado "Ding" Fortuna, the president of Nestle workers union and also the Chairman of PAMANTIK (Unity of Workers in Southern Tagalog) – the regional chapter of KMU in Southern Tagalog.

Brutal methods are employed to suppress the exercise of labor rights including massacring striking workers as in Hacienda Luisita and Lepanto Mining where the reactionary army fired on and killed many workers. The Philippine Army and Philippine National Police are used to violently disperse picketlines as in Nestle Philippines, Sun-Ever Light and in other strike-bound factories.

The escalation of labor rights violation followed President Arroyo’s declaration of war against militant trade unionists calling them enemies that … “terrorize factories that create jobs" in a speech before business leaders on August 6, 2002. The following year, the Commission on Trade Union and Human Rights documented a total of 95 cases of violations of workers’ civil and political rights that victimized 2,558 individuals. In 2004, the number of cases increased to 121 and the victims increased to 23,008.

Arousing, organizing and mobilizing the workers for the revolution

Our organizing work among the workers is in keeping with our Marxist-Leninist principle that the working class is the leading class in the Philippine revolution. We arouse and organize them based on their needs and demands and draw from their ranks the best elements into their own party, the Communist Party.

In conducting mass work among the workers, the first step is to do social investigation. We start by making friends with some workers in a given factory or line of work and holding a series of talks with them about their work and living conditions. The few friends that we start with have their own friends in the same workplace. So, it is always possible to expand our source of information whenever a previous round of talks seems insufficient.

A good knowledge of the reactionary laws pertaining to trade unions and workers is necessary. Actual work and living conditions of the masses of workers are so bad that certain provisions of these laws can be

invoked and used to improve these conditions. Our social investigation covers such things as job security, compliance with the minimum wage law, wage and medical care, the system of promotions, the number of regular and non-regular workers, the departments or sections of work, the profits made by the company, the need for a trade union truly concerned with the welfare of the workers and the like.

We try to be good pupils of the workers. At the same time, we inform the workers as to how they are being exploited and what they stand to gain by organizing a trade union and demanding compliance by the employers with provisions of the law that are beneficial to the workers. In the course of social investigation, we do not only accumulate data and firm up in the end a list of workers' demands. But we also develop close relations with the interviewees and pick out among them those who can initiate organizational work.

The workers' liaison group is formed from out of those workers with whom we have established relations at the beginning. This secret group can introduce to us more workers, coming from every major part of an enterprise, so that we can form a secret organizing group in every major part of that enterprise.

The next step is to form the workers' organizing committee by drawing representatives or the best elements from the organizing groups. At every step, we deepen our social investigation and provide political education and appropriate instructions to the workers that we come into contact with and organize.

The workers' organizing committee retains the organizing groups as its subsidiaries and improves their composition whenever necessary. By the time that the committee is established, it shall have been ready to draw up the list of workers' demands to which the majority of the workers are to be won over before the employers and his agents get wind of it. It takes only one, two or three capable Party cadres to work with the committee.

The workers' organizing committee can be formed ahead of the workers' organizing group only in cases where we are certain right away that reliable and capable members are on hand at the beginning at least for honest trade union work. Such cases occur whether the objective is to form a trade union where there is none, to transform an already existing one or to put up one trade union against a thoroughly discredited one.

The workers' organizing committee and its organizing groups are a good means for training and developing worker activists within them and outside them. The process of winning over the majority of workers to a list of union demands, creating the militant unity necessary to pursue such demands and developing the political consciousness of the worker masses are conditions for the emergence of a considerable number of worker activists.

At the stage of the workers' organizing committee and organizing groups, our Party cadres already draw into the Party the advanced elements from the ranks of worker activists. Those who have completed the education course on the trade union work and the national-democratic revolution can be immediately introduced to Marxism, their very own class ideology to which they are very receptive.

Marxism-Leninism is easily and profoundly grasped by the workers once clarified simply, relevantly and step-by-step. It is after all the theory that touches the essence of the workers' daily experience, that shows the leading role of their class in the revolution and that is drawn from the revolutionary experience of the world proletariat.

As soon as there are three or more Party members in a factory or line of work, a Party branch can be established. The ideological, political and organizational work of the Party branch and the groups under it in the enterprise is the best guarantee that revolutionary politics is in command of trade union work. The Party branch forms and directs the Party groups embedded in the leadership of the trade union.

The workers' organizing committee and its organizing groups are dissolvable upon the establishment of the Party branch and groups within the enterprise and when all the worker activists are integrated into the structure of the trade union. The organizing groups can be converted into group stewards and a number of their members can qualify to be members of the Party groups. More and more workers can be put into study circles organized by the Party.

The workers' organizing committees as an underground force in the ranks of workers do not stop at pushing forward only economic demands. We must combat reformism and economism. The workers' organizing committees relate the economic struggle to the Party's general line of people's democratic revolution. A strong political unity can be forged among the workers through group discussions not only on trade unionism but also on the whole range of topics on the Philippine revolution.

Some of our Party cadres may draw salaries and allowances from trade unions so as to devote their full time to trade union and political work. But Party members do not monopolize the high posts in the trade union, and the members of the secretariat of the Party branch do not necessarily become the highest leaders of the trade union. We allow the democratic broadness of the trade union; there can be good union leaders who cannot yet comply with the requirements of Party membership. Moreover, we do not want to let the enemy cripple the Party branch by simply clamping down on the trade union or its open leadership.

Trade unions under the effective leadership of the Party are not placed under only one chosen legal labor federation in consideration of the tactics of the enemy who may make a crackdown anytime. This is to prevent the enemy from singling out one nest for attack. Our trade unions can be independent or members of various labor federations. We determine the best possible status of each trade union.

The Party secretly links and coordinates all our trade unions. Our "independent" unions can retain more income from membership dues and are somewhat saved from control by the reactionary trade union leaders.

The Party branch in an enterprise sees to it that Party members and other worker activists, with the help of the mass of their workers, do systematic revolutionary work in the workers’ communities. We expand the workers' revolutionary movement by promoting contacts among workers of various enterprises not only within labor federations, along industrial lines or through factory areas but also through the communities.

Besides reaching the workers directly in a given factory or line of work, we can reach the workers who may belong to several workplaces by establishing community organizing committees and developing mass organizations of various types in workers' communities. Certainly, we can establish and develop the most intimate relations with the workers in workers' communities. After all, it is the appropriate style of a workers' organizing committee to hold its meetings in its members' homes rather than in the premises of a factory.

There is also the interaction between the workplace and the workers' community; between the workers' organizing committee and the community organizing committee, together with various mass organizations in the community; and between the Party branch based in the workplace and that based in the community. Workers in one factory belong to various communities and workers in one community belong to various workplaces. Thus, the possibility for expanding our reach and influence is limitless so long as we exert arduous efforts and we know how to rely on a never-ending chain of comrades and masses.

By going deep among the masses of workers, we develop and strengthen further the subjective forces of the revolution, the organized workers and the revolutionary party of the proletariat, the Communist Party of the Philippines, among others. The proletarian revolutionary character of the Party is greatly enhanced by increasing the number of Party cadres and members of working class origin who can either carry on the revolutionary struggle in the urban areas or be shifted to the countryside, especially to the New People's Army. #