The Failed Transport Strike
The nationwide transport strike last Monday did not attract as much sympathy or support from the general population because of many practical and apparent reasons.
Foremost of all are the issues and grounds raised by the transport strike organizers. Indeed, if the main ground is for the rollback of gasoline or diesel prices, the same is a futile effort and everyone knows this. Oil prices are not dictated nor controlled by the Philippine government but by the world market.
As an historical record, the price of crude oil reached U.S.$112.00 per barrel from the very sources in Saudi and the OPEC cartel. President Gloria Macapacal Arroyo had nothing to do with it. So even how much hoarse our voices will become shouting at the top of our voices to roll back the price of gasoline, the same will fall on deaf ears since the Saudis and the Iraqis and the Iranians and the Kuwaitis will never hear us. They all control the price of crude oil.
In short, we are barking at the wrong tree here. We are baying at the moon with no one hearing what we are complaining about.
Thus, many educated people already know that the transport strike is not the solution to the present crisis of high fuel prices. The world market cannot be controlled nor manipulated from this side of the Earth. Yet we still could do a lot from our own downside.
Let me suggest a few alternative options.
Raising the fare for jeepneys, taxis, motorelas, buses, boats, planes and other modes of transport is one clear solution. Give the jeepney and motorela drivers a break. A raise of P1.50 per passenger is not much on the passenger but it amounts to much on the driver and transport operator to compensate for the high fuel and oil prices.
But then, will it not raise the costs of education and livelihood for the ordinary families? Of course, it would! No argument about that. When the costs of transportation increase, it will raise all the costs of everything from food to medicines to education to electricity to housing to just everything in this planet. But that’s how life is and how life should be.
Welcome to reality my dear readers. Again, raise the transport fares and let everything else rise. That would necessarily result to an increase in wages or salaries for the ordinary workingman. Our maids and labanderas and drivers and gardeners would have raised wages. Our office secretaries and janitors and waiters and bakers and cooks will have raised wages. These would compensate for the increases of the costs of living. And this is real life.
Hence, the transport strikes, with all the other “issues” mixed into the issue of oil price increases, are not the solutions to our problems. They add up to our problems and to our needs. What happened last Monday when fathers were not able to work were left with children with empty stomachs, with the sick having no medicines, with the aged and old folks having missed their vitamins and sustenance medication. All because a nationwide strike prevented the ordinary flow of everyone’s normal run of things.
The demand for P150.00 across-the-board increase in wages is simply baseless and plain stupid. Any student in economics knows that wages and prices of commodities are always dictated by demand and supply and by market forces. Never by transport strikes and mass actions.
That is why the nationwide transport strike last Monday became a sorry flop. A dismal failure. A gross shame. It was an activity which already lost its meaning in the present society. It is an action whose relevance was long ago gone.
So the next time a transport strike is contemplated or planned, the organizers should think twice and look for more effective and more relevant means to get what they intended to achieve.
But making people’s lives more miserable, making the kids more hungry and making the ordinary folks lose their livelihood just because a transport strike is being implemented in the guise of caring for the greatest good of the greatest number of people, the general population should be more wary. More forewarned and more informed. More perceptive and less deceived.
So the next time there is a nationwide transport strike, ask yourself this question: Who will benefit most and lose most from this? The answer is certain, not the strikers but the ordinary workingman.
That is why last Monday’s transport strike failed. The people already understood. They know what makes the world go round. And that is hard work and perseverance. Not transport strikes.
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