Photos courtesy of the Metal Workers Alliance of the Philippines

Check this website: http://www.tmpcwa.org/

12 September 2008

Metal Workers Alliance of the Philippines
Statement in support of the Third Anti-Toyota Motor Corporation Global Campaign

As the largest concentration of industrial workers in the Philippines, metal and machine industries workers of the Metal Workers Alliance of the Philippines (MWAP) stand in resolute solidarity with Toyota workers in their enduring struggle against the anti-worker Toyota Motor Corporation. We salute the Toyota Motor Philippines Corporation Workers Association (TMPCWA) for its organized efforts over eight solid years, even with tremendous odds stacked against them, to advance our shared working class struggle in defense of labor rights, and promoting genuine working class solidarity and resistance.

MWAP adds its voice to all fellow workers, comrades, friends, labor advocates, and supporters in all the countries participating in this week-long global campaign against Toyota on its third year now. Critical actions like these expose and keep up the pressure against the “profit first” attitude that Toyota has self-servingly taken which is behind its rampant practice of illegalities, abuses, militarization, and union-busting efforts that crush workers’ fundamental rights for decent jobs, wages, and working conditions.

We praise Toyota Motors Philippines workers for their perseverance in putting up TMPCWA as a genuine, militant, and patriotic union despite original unionizing attempts whose yellow leaders compromised with management, followed by a second attempt which was destroyed by management hired agents. Since successfully becoming recognized as the sole and exclusive bargaining union however, Toyota Motors in orchestrated efforts with the Philippine government have relentlessly attacked TMPCWA. We stand in indignation against the 16 March 2001 illegal dismissal of 233 TMPCWA members and all its union leaders in an underhanded stab at stamping out their victory in establishing a union in Toyota that truly asserts their basic rights as workers and upholds their dignity to life.

After more than seven years of enduring mass dismissals, widespread contractualization, outsourcing and subcontracting schemes, harassment and surveillance to the point of military troop deployment on the same street of the union office, and even violent police dispersal of peaceful protest actions, this week’s global campaign and today’s collective action in the Philippines is a testament to the strength and unity of Toyota workers not afraid to fight back against one of the world’s biggest global corporations.

This week’s worker-led Third Anti-Toyota Motor Corporation Global Campaign holds great significance because workers the world over are among the hardest hit by the rapacity of imperialist onslaught in its destructive attempt to resolve the chronic crisis wreaking havoc everywhere its tentacles can reach. Through neo-liberal policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization imposed by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization, the economies of oppressed and underdeveloped nations like the Philippines are further impoverished and maintained as perpetually backward, export-oriented and import-dependent. Included are more and more schemes used by capitalists to exploit the working class in the name of more profit through the promotion of labor flexibilization, inhumane work, and low wages, tearing up of labor laws, and taking away hard-won victories won by the working class.

As fellow machine and metalworkers, which includes automobile manufactures like Toyota , MWAP knows that the development of the metal and machine industries is pivotal to the development of any nation, provided that fundamental changes in society are first carried out. Current policies of the U.S. – Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime however, maintain the country as a source of cheap raw materials and cheap labour on the global market, only made worse by more lopsided agreements like the recently signed Japan – Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) aimed to legally remove all tariffs of Japanese products entering the country. This arrangement ends up protecting the anti-worker policies and actions of Japanese corporations in the Philippines that Toyota Motors is through and through guilty of, especially for Toyota workers in Special Economic Zones who endure brutal working conditions, extreme exploitation, and the worst forms of repression.

MWAP therefore stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its fellow workers of Toyota Motors Philippines and TMPCWA in our shared task to heighten efforts to further arouse, organize, and mobilize more and more workers in the metals and car industry to be an important force in the progressive and militant workers’ and people’s movement in our march towards national freedom and genuine democracy in the Philippines. This is the challenge facing us today and we look forward to more and more of you joining us in this global campaign in calling for:

JUSTICE FOR THE 233 ILLEGALLY DISMISSED WORKERS OF TOYOTA !

STOP THE REPRESSION AND MILITARIZATION AGAINST TOYOTA WORKERS!

STRENGTHEN AND ADVANCE TOYOTA WORKERS’ GENUINE UNION !

LONG LIVE THE WORKING CLASS! LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY!

for more information and updates on this important campaign, please visit the

TMPCWA website:
 

http://www.tmpcwa.org/