$1-B loan better used at home

The Philippines $1-billion “loan-pledge” to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be used to impose antiworker austerity schemes in Europe. The money, taken from the country’s foreign reserves, comes from the blood and sweat of our own migrant workers.

The loan will only harm our OFWs in Europe. This will be so because the IMF’s austerity program dictates cuts in wages, reduction in social programs and liberalization of labor contractualization. As a result of the loan, Europe’s native and migrant workers will earn less, will be deprived of basic public services and will be easier to fire.

The government’s alibi that the loan will help Europeans has been belied by the fact that the supposed beneficiaries have rejected the IMF bailout and its conditionalities. Through protests and the polls, the workers and people of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and even France have all rejected austerity.

The loan to the IMF will just be used to bail out banks even as ordinary Europeans and migrant workers will continue to suffer the pains of austerity. In opposing the loan, we are extending the hand of solidarity to our brothers and sisters in Europe.

It is amazing that President Aquino readily comes to the aid of European bankers, but remains deaf to the cries of the Filipino workers for wage increase and regular jobs.

Instead of stabilizing the economies of Europe, the IMF is destabilizing them. Despite receiving several bailouts from the IMF, Greece has been in recession for five years running, with unemployment at more than 20 percent in general but more than 50 percent among the youth. This year, Spain fell into a double-dip recession with unemployment rates similar to Greece, which will be aggravated by austerity measures dictated in the recent bailout scheme.

The IMF wants the workers to pay for corporate greed and corruption. The Eurozone crisis is a result of the European governments’ bailing out their banks, which were saddled by failed speculative investments in the US subprime housing market that collapsed in 2008.

Just like Europe, the Philippines too is a victim of the antilabor and antipeople policies of the IMF. Liberalization has led to the collapse of Philippine industry and agriculture, resulting in job losses and rural unemployment. Privatization and deregulation have led to price hikes and worsening poverty.

It is time for a paradigm shift. Uphold growth and hope instead of recession and injustice in Europe and the Philippines. Shift to a new paradigm of living wages, regular jobs, taxes on the rich, social services, national industrialization and agrarian reform.

We call on President Aquino to reconsider the government’s decision to lend $1 billion to the IMF. The money would be better used for social protection at home rather than for social devastation abroad.

Help the needy, not the greedy! Support the Europeans through solidarity, not austerity!

—GERRY RIVERA,

president,

Philippine Airlines Employees’

Association (Palea),

2014 J. Gabriel St., Baclaran,

Parañaque City