Workers Demand Higher Wages and Lower Prices; Police Provide the Logistics for This Demand to Be Made at High Volume Near the Palace

From Bohiney and The London Prat.

Workers Demand Higher Wages and Lower Prices; Police Provide the Logistics for This Demand to Be Made at High Volume Near the Palace

The March

MANILA — Thousands of workers, activists, and members of labour coalitions marched along Espaa Boulevard toward Mendiola on May 1, Labour Day, calling for higher wages and lower prices of basic goods under the sustained slogan ‘Sahod itaas, presyo ibaba.’ The route was barricaded before it reached Malacanang Palace by authorities who installed security barriers along key access routes, producing the specific May Day geometry of workers marching toward the seat of power and the seat of power not being reachable from the direction of the march.

The 106,000

The Philippine National Police deployed over 106,000 officers on Labour Day with no work suspension for police personnel, on the grounds that their labour was required to secure the Labour Day activities of other workers. PNP Chief Gen. Nartatez described this as a commendable sacrifice. The 106,000 officers securing the Labour Day march are affected by the same cost of living conditions being protested in the march they are securing, which is the specific circular quality of Labour Day policing that produces the most interesting photographs of the annual event.

The Economic Context

The Labour Day demands — wage increases, lower food and fuel prices — are addressed to an economic context in which the Iran war’s energy market consequences have reached Philippine consumer prices, in which the peso’s relationship to the dollar has been affected by global risk dynamics, and in which the political warfare between the Marcos and Duterte camps has consumed governance attention that would otherwise be applied to economic management. The demands are legitimate. The economic conditions producing them are real.

Kilusang Mayo Uno

The Kilusang Mayo Uno and allied organizations coordinated the Labour Day mobilization, which is the annual exercise of the Philippine labour movement’s organizing capacity. The movement’s ability to fill Espaa Boulevard annually is a demonstration of organized labour’s continued presence in Philippine civil society, which exists alongside and sometimes against the political dynamics of the Marcos-Duterte confrontation that currently dominates national political attention.

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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The issues covered here are connected by the same underlying forces that shape the early 21st century: the rise of new economic powers, the disruption of established geopolitical arrangements, the energy transition that is changing the economics of everything, the digital transformation that is changing the information environment of everything, and the democratic and authoritarian governance experiments that are trying to determine what political systems produce the outcomes that populations need. The journalism that covers these forces at the level of the surf forecast, the cabinet meeting, the shark sighting, and the wave pool construction lien is the journalism that makes the abstract concrete. This publication continues to produce it because the concrete details are where the abstract forces become visible and where understanding begins. The next edition is already being prepared.

The issues covered here are connected by the same underlying forces that shape the early 21st century: the rise of new economic powers, the disruption of established geopolitical arrangements, the energy transition that is changing the economics of everything, the digital transformation that is changing the information environment of everything, and the democratic and authoritarian governance experiments that are trying to determine what political systems produce the outcomes that populations need. The journalism that covers these forces at the level of the surf forecast, the cabinet meeting, the shark sighting, and the wave pool construction lien is the journalism that makes the abstract concrete. This publication continues to produce it because the concrete details are where the abstract forces become visible and where understanding begins. The next edition is already being prepared.

The issues covered here are connected by the same underlying forces that shape the early 21st century: the rise of new economic powers, the disruption of established geopolitical arrangements, the energy transition that is changing the economics of everything, the digital transformation that is changing the information environment of everything, and the democratic and authoritarian governance experiments that are trying to determine what political systems produce the outcomes that populations need. The journalism that covers these forces at the level of the surf forecast, the cabinet meeting, the shark sighting, and the wave pool construction lien is the journalism that makes the abstract concrete. This publication continues to produce it because the concrete details are where the abstract forces become visible and where understanding begins. The next edition is already being prepared.