Arriving from the US on the martial law anniversary

Our plane has just touched down in the Manila International Airport from San Francisco after a rather turbulent 12-hour flight, with weather conditions quite volatile. It is just coincidental that a couple of days ago, my family and I were flying from La Guardia Airport in New York to Las Vegas, with a stopover in Charlotte (which was partly stricken by Hurricane Florence that devastated the Carolinas, north and south). It was also auspicious that we were in the Big Apple, New York City, on September 11 itself. Thus, in the evening, we went to Ground Zero to pay our respect to the 18 Filipinos who perished there along with almost three thousand victims. Today is the 46th anniversary of martial law and we need to reflect on the lessons we should have learned from 20 years or so under President Marcos.

From the airport, I am proceeding directly to the hotel where I have to speak before the annual convention of arbitrators. Former mayor Mike Rama and Atty. Maning Legaspi are attending with Atty. Joy Pesquera. The four of us are all labor arbitrators.

We are not government officials, except for Joy but we are accredited by the DOLE/NCMB to hear and decide labor disputes. We are not paid any salaries but we are doing these volunteer services to help both labor and management to find solutions to their labor and industrial disputes. We are also helping the government unclog their overburdened dockets, with cases lasting ten to twenty years, to the great damage and prejudice of both employers and employees.

It is ironical that voluntary arbitration was given statutory and legal recognition during martial law, specifically on May 1, 1974, when President Marcos approved en toto and promulgated the Labor Code drafted by experts under the direction of the greatest DOLE Secretary that we ever had, Blas F. Ople, the ILO-recognized dean of the world’s hundreds of Labor secretaries and Labor ministers, and the doyen of all Labor experts all over the world. Interestingly, Ople was not a lawyer and was not even a college graduate. He was brilliant, a prolific writer, a great orator and public speaker, and a true mentor for all of us so-called Ople boys of the seventies. That is why Ople pushed for voluntary arbitration where labor-dispute resolution is made less legalistic and more consultative, proactive, and non-adversarial.

Today, 46 years from the declaration of martial law, and 44 years after the promulgation of the Labor Code, we should remember that martial law might have caused many human rights violations. But it was the renaissance of labor legislations and labor administration. Career DOLE officials were mentored, trained and developed to lead the agency as career officials and personnel. It was also the times when labor and industry leaders were given active roles in labor administration within the context of tripartism. That was why the late Democrito T. Mendoza, Januario T. Seno, Cecilio T. Seno, and Ernesto F. Herrera rose to national prominence.

Today, straight from my flight from the US, I will lecture and tell the young arbitrators that martial law was not all gloom and doom to us. In the labor sector, the declaration of martial law ushered in a golden decade in the tripartite relationship among labor, employers, and the government, in the pursuit of industrial peace based on social justice.

‘The declaration of martial law ushered in a golden decade in the tripartite relationship among labor, employers, and the government.’