Labor Day

Labor Day started in 1882 in New York, USA, with 20,000 workers marching accompanied by a live band. It has historical and cultural significance, evolving from purely a labor union celebration to a broader national holiday recognized worldwide.

That inaugural march, conducted in a festive atmosphere, ushered in the de rigueur annual Labor Day celebration, which highlighted the important role of labor in shaping the world economy.

The Philippines, like many other countries, observes Labor Day on 1 May with street marches completely different from the original carnival-like event of the first street celebration.

In the Philippines, and perhaps elsewhere, the labor march transitioned from a celebratory event into a mixed tiresome tribute of triumphs and tribulations followed by the routine cinematic burning of effigies in hatred of the “baddies” against the labor movement.

This year, the march organizers were more subdued and decidedly focused on their placard messaging.

After the passing of Senate Bill 2534 for a P100 per day minimum wage increase across the board in the entire country, the labor leaders decided to unclutter their numerous demands with one central theme of a ₱100/day wage increase.

The usual burning of effigies was not seen on television and may have been untypical, but the labor leaders probably realized it to be a counter-intellectual act similar to the burnt offerings to please the gods.

Today, unlike in past marches, no effigy was burned. Instead, a crude model of somebody they dislike was furiously beaten to a pulp.

Conspicuously downplayed were the regular standard petitions such as more benefits, security of tenure, more non-working holidays, an expanded role in the management of enterprises, more paid leaves, free unemployment insurance, security of tenure, freedom of association, and more of everything.

Labor takes for granted and belittles the well-crafted and sincere congratulatory speeches and words of concern from President BBM and his officials as the labor leaders are too engrossed in their central theme of a wage increase.

Some street marchers headed towards the US embassy to deliver their nebulous agenda totally unrelated to domestic labor issues.

Another group marched to Malacañang for the traditional show of force and to read their recycled manifesto, which vigorously enjoins the government and employers to grant all their demands that they know the government and employers can never fulfill.

These same petitions may be repeated in the coming Labor Day celebrations in the usual feverish tone, where ideas are downgraded to the level of ideology, and the search for the greater good for the greater number is reduced to a barrage of bombastic, catchy but inane one-liners and empty slogans.

These scripted lines serve more the inflammatory rhetoric of the proverbial class struggle ideology rather than the common search for inclusive growth and the mutual benefit of all concerned.

But it gives these leaders the luxury of convenience of merely echoing their quixotic refrains and recycling old placards, which saves them the trouble of having to create or invent new slogans and lists of their unlimited desires.

It has always been a tug-of-war between brothers and bipartite partners — the MSMEs and organized labor — in the battle for workers’ hearts.

The absence of strikes, walkouts, slowdowns, and absenteeism clearly indicates who is winning.

But it is an empty victory for the winner.

Together, we face many common challenges that we need to mutually address, unhampered by self-serving ideologies and the false narratives of stale and inutile zero-sum games of endless opposition and conflictuality.

The workplace should not be a battleground because there are no victors, only victims in a war between brothers.