HACIENDA LUISITA — Rallyists here have prepared to meet anti-riot
policemen anew in skirmishes shortly after noontime Tuesday after
receiving word from their leaders who went to Manila that talks
with two prominent members of the Cojuangco clan bogged down.
This, even as 12 Army trucks loaded with Army
soldiers and a V-150 armored personnel carrier were seen to have
entered the Alto compound here, where members of former President
Corazon Aquino’s family live, around 11:30 a.m., reinforcing
about the about 1,000 police anti-riot contingent.
Police authorities put on hold on Tuesday
morning plans to disperse the picket of more than 6,000 protesters
at the Gate 1 of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) refinery as
former Tarlac Rep. Jose “Peping” Cojuangco Jr. and his nephew,
Tarlac second district Rep. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, held
in Manila “backdoor” talks with Ricardo Ramos and Rene Galang,
respective presidents of the CAT Labor Union (CATLU) and the
United Luisita Workers’ Union (ULWU).
The informal negotiations, meant to peacefully
resolve the mass actions that shut down the operations of
Luzon’s biggest sugar mill, had for its “intermediaries”
sectoral Rep. Satur Ocampo, of the radical party-list group Bayan
Muna, and activist Tarlac City councilor Abel Ladera.
It was learned that both sides in the talks
took “hard line” stands, with Peping and Noynoy asking Ramos
and Galang to first dismantle the picketline in order for the CAT
to resume operations before formal negotiations are held, but the
union leaders insisted otherwise.
It was last Nov. 6 when the protest actions
here commenced.
CATLU was in a deadlock in its collective
bargaining agreement (CBA) talks with management, as it was
demanding a P100 salary increase and a P30,000 signing bonus for
each of its members. The CAT maintained that it can only provide a
P12 wage hike and a P12,000 bonus
ULWU, on the other hand, was demanding for the
reinstatement of 327 farmworkers laid off by the Hacienda Luisita,
Inc. (HLI) last Oct. 1, even as among those dismissed were Galang,
its vice president, Ildefonso Pingul, and eight other union
officers.
The inclusion of the ULWU officers in the mass
retrenchment came even as the union had then just started holding
CBA talks with the HLI, the corporate farming firm established in
the late 1980s under the stock scheme of the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) where the more than 5,000
farmworkers here are also being regarded as the Cojuangcos’
“co-owners.”
Several “backdoor” talks were already
actually held between members of the Cojuangco family and the
rally leaders since last Thursday, delaying the implementation by
the police of Labor Sec. Patricia Sto. Tomas’ order for the
protesting CATLU members to return to work, and for the Department
of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to take over the operations of the
sugar mill here.
Tuesday’s round of talks was the last to bog
down again.
At least three instances of violent
confrontations already took place between the police and the
protesters.
The first was in the early evening of Nov. 6,
followed by another one before the break of dawn the following day.
Before noontime Monday, scores were again hurt,
including Ramos and Galang, as well as two policemen, when more
than 500 personnel of the police anti-riot force engaged the
rallyists in a 30-minute clash.
The Armed Forces’ Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom),
further tagged guerillas of the communist-led New People’s Army
(NPA) of burning sugarcane fields in Barangay Murcia in Concepcion
town, and Barangay Texas, Tarlac City, two of the 10 villages that
are within this 6,000-hectare sugar estate.
The fire in Barangay Murcia occurred about an
hour before the protest activities here commenced at noontime last
Nov. 6. The one in Barangay Texas started while Bayan Muna’s
Ocampo was delivering a speech before rallyists here at around 3
p.m. last Monday.
The Nolcom even blamed the NPA for the
explosion of a transformer of the National Power Corp. (NPC) in
Barangay Buenavista here at around 3 a.m. Monday, which caused an
about 10-hour power failure throughout the province of Tarlac.
It is not yet clear at what exact time will the
police try to dismantle again the picketline at the refinery, but
it was found out that several policemen from Olongapo City also
already arrived here on orders by Chief Supt. Quirino dela Torre,
police regional director for Central Luzon.
As the tension here continued to mount again,
political leaders in the province, particularly Gov. Jose Yap and
Tarlac City Mayor Genaro Mendoza, renewed their appeal for both
the Cojuangco family and the union leaders to exhaust all means to
peacefully settle the labor dispute.
Management claimed that it was losing about P5
million a day due to the labor lockout, even as also affected are
Central and Northern Luzon’s sugar planters and their employees.
Being Luzon’s biggest sugar refinery, the CAT
has the capability of milling more than 7,000 tons of sugarcane in
a day.
The nearest sugar refinery in Luzon that can
mill large volumes of sugarcane is the Central Azucarera de Don
Pedro, which is owned by the Roxas family in Batangas, which is in
Southern Luzon.
There are other sugar mills in Pampanga, but
these are small and could hardly accommodate all the sugarcane
harvests in Central and Northern Luzon.