It goes with less words that confronted with geometric rising of prices of goods and services Bicol workers’ fate on increase of wages at the divisive Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPD) is sealed, fleshed and fleeced to the bone last May. How else could local labor interpret soaked innuendos in the employers’ grant of P15, when what is asked is P125 to uncurse the Bicolano’s purse to P599 in feeding a family of 4 children and treat them to barbecue or fish ball in the plaza after the afternoon Mass every Sunday.

Even in the north, workers could hardly count on their proposal of P178, already challenged by the P25 given in Manila. It’s like blowing air to a wooden mortar to remove rice bran. You get to know your mistake after getting infected, red eyes.

Right from the start of the negotiations, the table was already tilted to a 90-degree slant that the laborers have no other way to move but down. Let’s look at the composition of the fractured RTWPD: chair is from DOLE; 2 vice chairs, NEDA, DTI; 2 representatives each from employer and labor. This is anti-labor.

Need to tell you, me, that when PGMA signed the VAT law, capitalists were laughing with their wisdom teeth visible from 2 meters. No choking happened when the toast came for a job well done. It came too smooth as if from a vintage of age when they were only drinking mineral water. Now the country is offered $2 billion from loan porfolios, say you?

Congress, which gave La Presidenta the standby power to raise VAT tax from 10 to 12%, could not care less. Allies of labor militants see an inch in the proceedings of the P125 legislated raise in the House a kilometer of ambush mountain path dotted with snipers.

And Labor Sec. Patricia A. Sto, Tomas reins the so-called moderate, muzzled labor against the “misguided elements” whose clamor is to give stricken workers the P125 addition. This Labor Solidarity Movement (LSM) composed of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), the Federation of Free Workers (FFW), the Trade Union of the Philippines and Allied Services (TUPAS), the Philippine Organization of Labor Unions (POLU), gave La Presidenta in May a hurriedly-done manifesto unable to hide which interest was being promoted. An item: “Outlawing of contractualization” sends more shocks to nervous workers and small-business, labor intensive enterprises. This proviso alone drowns the poor. But the real notoreity here lies in the giving of the carrot and stick in precisely the same equanimity. Well, this is politics.

But the government cannot in itself rely on the people that run its mill for the former’s sake. Unless it ends up to the ruled no government can claim the slightest viability of its actions.

No true advancement in community takes place in a vacuum. While capital is necessary in turning the wheels of economy, it’s still labor that carries the distinct privilege of putting the shackles on its shoulders to put the rotation to rest.

So the state must realize its predicament in undervaluing labor. It declares war against itself. The institution, that shames others for lack of matter and grace, finds no more than the same creeping in the confines of its comfortment.