CAPILLAS
If a bus strike similar to what happened in Manila occurred in Metro Cebu, imagine the public uproar and even violence that may break out between drivers, management and even passengers.
Last Dec. 29, over 10,000 passengers were stranded after the drivers, all of whom supposedly belonged to a union not recognized by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) as claimed by the DLBT bus liner management, held a strike to protest their low salaries which were below minimum wage.
The bus drivers also said they were not given their 13th month pay, an allegation denied by the management. The bus firm’s legal department said two unions were locked in a dispute over who will collect the union dues from them.
When asked by reporters why they timed their strike during the days leading up to the New Year, the drivers said there was no opportune time like the holidays to stage the strike to attract public attention to their plight.
As a result, most of the passengers who were headed to Bicol, Bohol and Leyte provinces were forced to spend New Year in Manila. Those headed for Bicol were especially concerned for their families since the province bore the brunt of Typhoon Niña.
The DLBT bus strike is yet another example of how operators or drivers or both can hold the riding public hostage in order to advance their agenda, which in this case is about low pay.
While there are venues to deliberate on this without sacrificing the welfare of commuters, who pay for their salaries and are the principal source of revenue for the bus firm, everything goes out the window whenever either side of the dispute tries to one-up the other.
In the DLBT bus liner case, it was about the management’s decision to recover by force their bus units from the barricade set up by the drivers to prevent the company from using their units.
Using trucks and whatever heavy equipment they could find, the management forcibly recovered their buses despite the crowd of drivers who locked arms just to prevent the management’s personnel from recovering the buses.
But the management won the day, forcing the drivers to extend their strike even if their status as a union were questioned by management. Militant groups would decry this incident as yet another example of oppressive capitalist practices that were tolerated even under the Duterte administration.
To be accurate about it, there had been a lot of protest actions staged by the militants in the past few months including the vandalism at the US Embassy that tragically resulted in one police officer running over some protestors with a police vehicle.
While transport firms here in Metro Cebu have so far been able to run smoothly with nary a cause for discontent, it’s disturbing to think just what would happen if one day some of their drivers decided to stage a lightning strike and succeed in stranding thousands of commuters headed to the province for the holidays, in this case during the April 12–16 Holy Week break.
Since it would be summer by then, the warm to hot weather would only cause tempers to flare and delay the resolution of any drivers’ strike, prolonging the protracted dispute to a standstill.
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As a commuter who cannot afford to buy a car and would hesitate to drive one unless forced by circumstance to pilot a war- and disaster-hardened vehicle ready to take on the zombie apocalypse and survive in a post-Trump world without gasoline (think Batmobile, Transformers or those Mad Max vehicles), I join the rest of the riding public in gnashing teeth and screaming to the high heavens against a transport “holiday” forced upon us by operators and drivers.
In last year’s Sinulog, I had to walk a considerable distance just to flag down a taxi only to be turned down repeatedly. It was that time when I discovered the benefit of riding a habal-habal (motorcycle-for-hire) in the streets even if it exposed me to the danger posed by thieves and stoned/drunk revelers.
I guess I’ll have to take that risk again unless Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña makes good on his promise to arrest unruly revelers and otherwise impose some semblance of discipline among partygoers in the Jan. 15 celebration of the Sinulog.
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