The Semantics of Transport Strike Reporting : QC IMC

It is interesting how the words "inconvenience" and "stranded" so often surface everytime some media quarters report on transport strikes. Inevitably, some media reports on transport strikes would carry news about commuters "inconvenienced" or "stranded" because of the transport strikes.

In such reports commuters are painted as "victims" of spoiled-brat "profiteers" who drive public transport vehicles.

Such reports completely miss the point, as they fail to capture the plight of public transport drivers as victims themselves.

Historically, public transport drivers have never staged strikes out of pure "capriciousness" as government spokespersons and the relatively uninformed in media quarters tend to claim. Transport strikes are the results of government refusal to address issues that deal with the bread and butter of the transport sector.

Today's nationwide strike for instance, which has been reported to have paralyzed anywhere from 85 to 95 percent of public transportation in the routes it has affected, is the resull of government dilly-dallying on a fare hike petition more than a year old.

The last time public transport drivers were authorized to increase fare was in 2000. Since then, diesel prices have increased by almost P5, with increases coming even at times when there were donwtrends in the world oil market, and from a net daily income of more than P200 pesos in 2000 jeepney drivers have been reduced to taking home P160 a day.

This, even as the cost of living for the average Filipino family continues to climb and, as of October last year, has already reached P555 accordfing to a study by socio-economic think tank Ibon Foundation. The data for the said study was culled from the National Wages and Productivity Board.

(When transport groups filed their petition for fare increase in October 2002, the daily cost of living for the average Filipino family was already more than P500).

Taking their cue from the very guidelines of Land Transportation Franchise and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), which provide that fare may be hiked when oil prices have increased significantly, transport groups filed in October 2002 a petition for fare increase. The LTFRB simply sat on the petition, for more than a year, and last February the petitioners were told that there was no basis for granting their petition.

So they went on strike last March 1, compelling the LTFRB to again open the lines of dialogue. But the talks have turned out to be only skits, with the transport groups being told alternately that the position paper they had submitted had been lost and that their petition could not be granted since a fare hike would be followed by a workers' clamor for wage increase--as if labor groups had not been pushing for a P125, across-the-board, nationwide wage increase since 1999.

Today's clearly successful transport strike is a follow-up to that demand. That the transport strikers have been able to get their point across is obvious in the P0.63 fare calibration, which is still "measly" as Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo has correctly described it.

If public transport drivers simply stick to the "legal" processes instead of going on strike, they could file a thousand petitions but most probably none of these would be granted. The authorization to increase fare which came their way in 2000 would have probably not come if they had not previously gone on a number of strikes.

Reports on transport strikes which are saturated with the terms "inconvenience" and "stranded" miss the point because these leave out the role of government and transnational oil companies in forcing the transport sector to "inconvenience" the commuting public. These reports fail to take into account the known fact that under a deregulated regime, oil prices jump as whimsically as they could, with the people--including the transport sector--bearing the brunt of things.

Unfortunately, the transport sector is always found as a convenient scapegoat for those quarters who are too ignorant to pinpoint, or too cowardly to blast, the real sources of inconvenience. The consolation is that going by the street polls conducted by broadcast media, the protesting transport groups have been able to make their case well, and consequently have made greater sections of the broad public understand their point and sympathize with their action. QC Independent Media Center