On January 29, around 1 p.m., soldiers from the 66th IBPA & 25th IBPA gathered the residents of Sitio Pogi, Brgy. San Miguel, Compostela, and presented names of civilians they alleged to have links and tasks in the revolutionary NPA, including some union leaders of a banana company, namely Roland Cobrado, Perlita Milallos, and Elmer Atamosa.
Esperidion Cabaltera, president of the MWLU-II-NAFLU-KMU, ascribed their victory to the “unified resoluteness and courage of the workers” who, he said, have long been experiencing injustices in Musahamat.
She entered the National Labor Federation of Labor Unions (NAFLU) as a graduating student doing her practicum for a secretarial course; little did she know then that she would learn more than doing office work.
When workers try to exercise their rights to hold mass actions and strikes to secure better wages and working conditions, they are labeled or tagged as communist supporters or trouble makers, are brutally dispersed from their picketline, and are harassed with “trumped up” legal cases.
Everywhere, restrictions on workers forming genuine unions have prompted them to do union organizing in an “underground” or clandestine way, at least, at first.