Thousands of Filipino workers joined by the youth and students and other democratic sectors marched to the road leading to the Presidential Palace carrying demands for decent wages, decent employment, recognition of the right to freedom of association, right to unionize, respect for human rights, climate justice, and end to trade union repression and and end to political dynasties and corruption, among others.

The militant trade union movement Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU, May One Movement), stressed that the minimum wage should be raised to a living level of Php1,200 (21,56 USD) to adapt to the rising cost of living and decades of stagnant wage increases. It explained that the amount is necessary to ensure that workers earn enough for food, housing, medicine, and transportation.

The Marcos regime has refused to heed the Filipino workers’ plea for a measly addition of Php 200 (3.59USD) across-the-board increase to their starvation pay. Some 15.5 million Filipinos were suffering from hunger and poverty, according to recent surveys.

Filipino workers are not only economically oppressed, they endure political repression as well. A group of relatives and friends of political prisoners, called for the immediate release of 32 political prisoners from the labor sector who are union organizers and unionists who are  imprisoned for fabricated cases because they are fighting for decent work, fair wages, and other labor rights.

According to the group, of the 32 political prisoners, 16 are members of the Kilusang Mayo Uno; 9 are from the island of Negros with 7 of them members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers; 3 are from Courage; and the rest are from other labor organizations. There are currently 748 political prisoners in the Philippines. Other trade unionists and workers have been victims of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances perpetrated by state terrorist forces.

Militant Filipino migrant workers in several countries abroad have joined with other working class peoples and migrants of other nationalities in commemorating May One and echoing the global call for decent wages, regular employment and job security and a stop to repression, fascism and imperialist-instigated wars. About ten percent of the Philippine population of about 15 million are overseas to escape poverty, job insecurity and political repression in the Philippines.

In a message to the Filipino workers and people on May One, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) stressed that along with their union struggles, the political consciousness of the working masses must be raised, and their collective actions must be focused on exposing and resisting the anti-worker, anti-poor, fascist and pro-foreign policies and programs of the ruling US-Marcos regime.

The CPP called on the Filipino working class to place their ranks at the forefront of the people’s struggles to push for the increase in the minimum wage and salaries of employees, against the corruption of the ruling regime, against fascist crimes, against the relentless increase in the price of commodities, against the reckless importation of rice, against the Balikatan and the war games of the US, against the puppetry of the Marcos regime to its imperialist master, as well as, in solidarity with the Palestinian people against the genocide of the Zionist state of Israel. Workers must resound the call for genuine land reform and national industrialization and the cry for national democracy.

The CPP said that the popularization of the study of the Party Constitution and the Program for the People’s Democratic Revolution, will “teach the working masses that the ultimate solution to the hardships and suffering of the people is the end of the semicolonial and semifeudal system. They must be shown that while strikes and other forms of collective action are important to fight for the interests and welfare of the workers and the people, armed struggle is necessary as the main form of resistance to overthrow the ruling classes and their power based on armed suppression of the people”.

The Party further called on the current generation of workers, especially young workers, to go to the countryside and join the New People’s Army, as the main embodiment of the basic alliance of workers and peasants, who constitute the majority of the Filipino people. The mass participation and leadership of the working class in the people’s war, the CPP emphasized, is crucial in the effort to strengthen the NPA’s ability to crush the enemy piece by piece, and to build the people’s democratic government step by step.