From Balitang America:

Filipino Caregivers Demand Passage of Workers Bill of Rights

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – About 200 caregivers and their supporters traveled to the State Capitol in Sacramento yesterday to attend the first hearing on the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

The bill would grant caregivers and domestic workers rights to minimum wage, overtime pay, sick and vacation leaves, proper rest breaks and health care coverage.

69-year- old Tony Reta, who once cared for nine elderly patients on a daily basis said caregivers are burdened with round-the-clock hard work. He said, “Not only do you have to care for the patients, you have to care for the home where you work is clean. It’s not a joke. It’s hard work.”

Another caregiver, 60-year- old Boots de Chavez traveled all the way from Los Angeles — to let California lawmakers know how much they’ve suffered. She said, “We feel there are no rewards to our hard work. We don’t have any protection at work.”

Reta and de Chavez’ prayers for support from the government were answered that day. The California Assembly Committee passed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. But the bill has to go through the Assembly floor, the Senate committee and the Senate floor — before it goes to Governor Jerry Brown’s office for signing.

If it passes among California lawmakers, Brown could sign the bill by September.

New York is the only state in the nation that has passed a similar bill of rights for caregivers and domestic workers.

You can reach Henni Espinosa at henni_espinosa@abs-cbn.com

The War on Terror continues around the globe with $1.15 trillion U.S. tax dollars being spent on this alone. In the meantime FBI repression upon Anti-War activists intends to silence opposition to war. Right wing attacks on workers rights and union organizing make way for rampant abusive conditions in the workplace. Continuing cuts to education paired with ever increasing tuition fees limit access to education. Women’s reproductive rights & access to affordable health care are continually de-prioritized by the government. These are attacks on OUR communities, because the working poor and immigrant communities suffer the most due to cuts to basic services. BAYAN-USA joins with all peace loving people to demonstrate in defense of our rights to fight for the needs of our communities!

BAYAN-USA calls for an end to U.S. military occupation in Iraq and promotes the people’s national democratic struggle against U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. We call to CUT the $30 million US tax dollars that is sent every year to the Philippines that support oppressive policies such as the Visiting Forces Agreement and the current counterinsurgency program Oplan Bayanihan which targets political activists and community organizer-People Just Like Us. We condemn the 3,000 additional American Troops that are arriving in the Philippines This month to conduct Balikatan exercises with the Armed Forces of the Philippines! We call for an END to the increasing militarization that has caused the deaths of innocent civilians and displaces entire communities. We support the people’s liberation movements fighting U.S. imperialism and puppet-dictatorships in order to truly see our countries FREE from foreign occupation!

Mass uprisings are taking place all around the globe demanding that dictators step down in order to make room for true democracies created by the people for the sole purpose of serving the people! As BAYAN-USA we wish to encourage all oppressed peoples to continue building an international movement to rid the world of U.S. imperialism and to support people’s revolutionary movements by building genuine international solidarity. Let us all continue to build a better world for all!

We Say END the U.S. military Presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines and across the world!
FREE FREE FREE! FREE Palestine! END END the Occupation!
END the Visiting Forces Agreement & Balikatan Exercises!
SUPPORT People Power Movements around the Globe!
SUPPORT Affordable Healthcare, Housing, and Human Rights HERE in the United States!

LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY!

On the occasion of Kilusang Mayo Uno’s 10th National Congress, we Filipino-American youth and students proclaim our solidarity with the struggle of the working class in the Philippines and throughout the world.  We applaud Kilusang Mayo Uno’s genuine, militant and patriotic trade unionism as an expression of the continuation and strengthening of the revolutionary tradition of the Filipino working class.

We youth and students recognize your critical role as the Filipino working class in transforming society through the advancement of the national democratic movement with a socialist perspective.  Without integrating with the workers, we would be divorced from the realities that plague the Filipino people and would fall prey to the bourgeois culture that only serves to profit the few by exploiting the majority.  It is only through your leadership that we can thoroughly analyze the concrete conditions in society and advance steadily towards genuine freedom and democracy.

In the midst of the current crisis of the world capitalist system, the brunt of the burden is being placed upon the shoulders of the working class of the world.  In the US, the gap between the rich and the poor is the widest that it has ever been.  Workers are suffering more strenuous workloads and unpaid wages while others lose their jobs, homes, and health care after decades of hard work.  In addition to abusive working conditions, poverty wages, and the cutting of social services, workers face outright attacks from the ruling class.  In Wisconsin, the reactionary state congress is stripping away the collective bargaining rights of public employees.  Meanwhile in the Philippines, union leader Celito Baccay became the 41st victim of extrajudicial killings under the Aquino administration.  The escalation of labor rights violations around the globe are products of neoliberal globalization and symptomatic of a desperate system that is already crumbling. Imperialism continuously attempts to destroy the ability of the working class to unite and fight for their rights, but workers around the globe continue to resist these schemes.  Kilusang Mayo Uno shines as a beacon of genuine trade unionism, the kind that shuns shallow economism and advances genuine systemic change for the working class.

We Filipino-American youth and students join you in the growing struggle of workers around the world for jobs, decent wages, humane working conditions, and collective bargaining rights.  Here in the US, we are joining picket lines of hotel and health care workers, mobilizing community support for trafficked Filipino migrant workers, and supporting the campaigns of domestic workers for fair wages, recognition, and dignity.  Over 100,000 workers and students of Wisconsin took the streets to protest union-busting.  We celebrate the upsurge of the worker’s struggle in the belly of the beast and Kilusang Mayo Uno’s many victories and ongoing fights for workers rights.  They are powerful and inspiring contributions to the global struggle for a just and humane world.

We salute you and stand firmly by your side in escalating the fight against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism, the root problems that force our families to migrate overseas due to the lack of genuine land reform and national industrialization in our homeland.  The victorious and continuing uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa expose the vulnerability of imperialism.  With the ever deepening unity of the youth and other sectors of society with the workers, the inevitable downfall of imperialism is at hand.

Mabuhay Kilusang Mayo Uno!

Youth and Workers of the world unite!

Long live international solidarity!

Uring manggagawa, hukbong mapagpalaya!
In solidarity: Anakbayan East Bay, Anakbayan Los Angeles, Anakbayan New Jersey, Anakbayan New York, Anakbayan San Diego, Anakbayan Seattle, Anakbayan Silicon Valley, League of Filipino Students – San Francisco State University

Filipino Women in the U.S. Stand in Solidarity and Sisterhood with Women’s Struggles Across the World
GABRIELA-USA’s Statement on the Centennial of International Women’s Day

On March 8, 2011, over ten thousand women in the Philippines took to the streets, in what are the largestInternational Women’s Day actions organized by GABRIELA, the world-renowned Filipino women’s alliance.  The women demanded relief from the economic crisis in the form of price controls of basic goods, national wage hikes, immediate repatriation and protection for migrant women, comprehensive reproductive health services, education for all, and housing for poor families.  In addition, GABRIELA highlighted their unity with the rest of the Filipino people in calling for fundamental change and national liberation.

Read more here!

As Filipino Americans we will continue to stand in solidarity with the courageous struggle of the Egyptian people and all oppressed people until freedom is finally won!

The allied organizations of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-USA Northern CA (BAYAN-USA-NORCAL), as members of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), stand in solidarity with the people of Egypt and Tunisia as they struggle for genuine democracy and freedom. As patriotic and peace loving Filipinos living the United States we feel that the massive demonstrations in which the Egyptian and Tunisian people are aggressively asserting their rights to freedom and dignity are not only just, but necessary considering the unbearable conditions of repression and negligence to basic human rights brought on by more than three decades of rule by respective fascist dictatorships of Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. For Filipinos the world over the scene of a sea of humanity calling out for a dramatic and sweeping change in socio-political conditions is “déjà vu all over again.”

The peoples’ uprisings that are ongoing in the nations of Egypt and Tunisia come literally weeks before the anniversary of the famed People Power Uprising in the Philippines which overthrew the fascist dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Even for young Filipinos who were not alive at the time of People Power the scenes of Filipinos occupying Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (or EDSA) are imbued in their collective consciousness as if they had actually been present during those fateful three days in late February of 1986.

Much like in Egypt and Tunisia today, the demonstrators were not simply a group of activists or students, but represented all classes and sectors of society. Working people, professionals, government officials, clergy members, men, women, youth; they were all present. Over 2,000,000 Filipino civilians spoke in a common voice calling for an end to the regime of Ferdinand Marcos and for definitive solutions to the lack of employment, landlessness, and poor access to basic needs and services.

We have faith in the possibility that Mubarak’s iron grip on the nation of Egypt will in fact be loosened and overcome and we also hope for genuine democracy in Tunisia with the departure of Ben Ali. We are not, however, naïve about the likelihood that the bourgeois interests of the old Egyptian and Tunisian elite will hijack the victory of the Egyptian and Tunisian people simply to recycle the old anti-people policies of the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes under different names.

Despite the overthrow of Marcos Filipinos came into yet another round of repressive leaders representing the interests of the comprador/landlord class and Philippine elite puppeted by American Imperialism. Filipinos welcomed Corazon Aquino and her yellow-clad Laban Party with open arms, yet were met with the same repression and disregard for human rights that they faced during the Marcos dictatorship. The people’s struggle in the Philippines continues to this day and so shall the struggles of the Egyptian and Tunisian peoples.

Regardless of the immediate outcome of the current demonstrations we are convinced that Egyptians, Tunisians, Filipinos and all oppressed people of the world will continue undaunted in their quest for liberation until genuine freedom has been won. Long Live International Solidarity! ###

BAYAN-USA-NORCAL is always proud to see our youth and student member organizations, along with our fellow Filipino American allies, support struggles in the Philippines!