Marginalized workers cannot eat motherhood statements and unfulfilled promises that embellished the President’s Labor Day message.

The labor force needs immediately concrete, specific and substantial benefits like a wage increase approximating a living wage, elimination of contractualization or outsourcing of labor requirements to reduce workers’ benefits, and termination of the practice of “endo”, the contrived expiration of labor contracts before a worker completes six months of employment to preclude a permanent status.

The guarantees to the workingman like dignity of labor, security of tenure, humane conditions of work and a living wage are already enshrined in the Constitution and related statutes.

President Duterte need not reiterate these principles. What is required is an unequivocal and impartial enforcement of the constitutional and statutory rights of labor.

Benefits to workers must be immediately given. The President’s asking for more time after almost a year of incumbency is an inexcusable procrastination which is anti-labor.

EDCEL C. LAGMAN