While Nestlé spends billions in advertisements for its 100 years of business in the Philippines,
the Filipino workers and people have no reason to celebrate in the centennial of exploitation and
terror by this foreign monopoly capitalist.On the first week of May, the news on salmonella
contamination of Maggi noodle products alarmed most consumers. Aside from this, the Swiss
company has more blood debts behind the ads blitz and sponsorships.
Nothing is to be proud of with a multinational corporation number one in continuously playing
above Philippine laws. The Supreme Court, in 1991, ruled the Nestlé workers’ Retirement
Benefits a legitimate issue in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the union and
management in Cabuyao, Laguna. With its political and economic influences, Nestlé did not
implement the SC decision.
The defence of SC decision, the right to union, right to collectively bargain, and other laws are
the basic grounds for strike of the more than 600 Nestlé workers on January 14, 2002. The SC
reaffirmed on 2008 its earlier decision, however Nestlé still ignored the decision.
The workers had been on strike for more than nine (9) years now. Forty-eight (48) striking
workers died in the course of the struggle without seeing justice being served.
The Retirement Benefits package is but just a small amount asked by workers in their retirement
after having spent more than half their lives in service to Nestlé. This is but a small crumb
compared to Nestlé’s P1.67 billion expense for 4,310 minutes of television advertisement in the
first three months of this year alone.
Aside from doing business above the law, Nestlé is notorious for the assassination of two union
presidents in the Cabuyao factory. With hired goons, police and military, Meliton Roxas was
shot in front of their picketline on January 20, 1989 and Diosdado Fortuna while on his way
home from the picketline on September 22, 2005. Justice has not been served to these martyred
leaders.
Abroad, Nestlé is held responsible for the killing of 12 unionists in Nestlé Colombia, including
Luciano Enrique Romero Molina and Gustavo Gomez.
For the Filipino working class and the people, the big show being put by Nestlé for its 100 years
of business in the country is but drenched in blood
