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Since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took power, she has done nothing but add to the burdens of government employees. First, she pegged their salaries at very low levels. She flatly denied their longstanding demand for a P3,000 increase in monthly salaries. Worse, she dropped from the budget the 5% salary increase approved by the Estrada regime in 2000. Macapagal-Arroyo has said that her regime would not be giving a single centavo for employees of the civilian bureaucracy in 2003. On the other hand, the regime has allotted more than P5 billion for pay increases of soldiers and policemen. Government employees were able to win additional benefits in 2001 through collective negotiations with their respective departments. But the regime rescinded these benefits in 2002. Even legislated benefits are being revoked. All things considered, there is not much difference between the take-home pay of government employees and private sector workers. From his minimum-level monthly pay of P5,800, a rank and file employee is able to allot P193.33 per day for expenses. This amount has yet to be subjected to various deductions by the government for "contributions" to the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Pag-ibig, Philhealth and other institutions. With all these deductions, only about P5,000 is left, or an equivalent of P167 per day. This is a far cry from the P532 needed daily for a family's basic needs. Thus, the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA), personal allowance, special bonuses and other benefits in the form of subsidies mean a lot to government employees.
Government employees are able to raise their incomes only through waging relentless struggles. They were able to win benefits almost every year from 1998 to 2000. But most of these benefits came in the form of "emergency allowances" that provided temporary relief rather than increases in their basic pay. Actually, they were granted such benefits merely as a consolation and a means of assuaging their discontent. Government employees, however, have been able to gain salary increases and additional benefits through the Collective Negotiating Agreement or CNA. The CNA is equivalent to the CBA or collective bargaining agreement among private sector workers. In negotiating with the managements of their respective agencies or departments, government employees are able to demand appropriate benefits. They are also able to assert their rights to unionize and to have job security. The CNA has also been a key in recovering benefits abolished with the enactment of the Salary Standardization Law (SSL). Under the SSL, the COLA is granted at the department or agency level based on the availability of funds. Government employees are now waging a struggle to have the COLA granted on a nationwide basis. In 2000 and again in 2002, government unions won cases filed before the Supreme Court granting the COLA to all government employees. Militancy vs. suppression of union rightsGovernment unions have been able to assert their rights and welfare with remarkable determination and zeal this year. Many unions were able to gain good concessions and several departments and agencies were compelled to recognize and respect union rights. There were a number of cases where employees militantly took a stand against corrupt and oppressive government officials. They include, among others, the expos� by department of Education employees of former secretary Raul Roco; and by BIR employees of bureau chief Rene Ba�ez. Prior to this, SSS employees successfully ousted the corrupt and "dictatorial" Vitaliano Na�agas. Macapagal-Arroyo has tried but failed to impose a 10-year moratorium on CNAs due to stiff opposition from government employees. Instead, she has imposed a moratorium on "signing bonuses," an incentive granted to employees whenever a CNA is signed. From experience, each employee receives from P3,000 to P20,000 as "signing bonus."
Macapagal-Arroyo has likewise been intimidating and threatening government employees. Cases have been filed against SSS employees who joined protests. Others have been threatened with dismissal should they join other mass actions. The suppression of their rights to unionize, negotiate and strike is a serious matter to government employees. Even if these rights are enshrined in the reactionary constitution, employees are strictly prohibited from waging protests, mass actions and strikes during office hours. There is a big need to continue organizing government employees into unions. As of now, there are only 903 registered unions in the public sector. There are 1.4 million government employees nationwide. Out of the registered unions, only a little over 290 (32%) are recognized as negotiating agents. Mass termination due to privatizationGovernment employees continue to confront the issue of mass terminations due to the privatization program. They have so far been able to block attempts to privatize big agencies such as the National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR) and the National Food Authority. Nonetheless, government employees are aware of the fact that the regime will seek other ways of effecting privatization and will push ahead with its schemes as soon as the protests die down. Among those who are up against one of the biggest fights are employees of public corporations. After securing the approval of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act, the regime has redoubled its efforts to privatize NAPOCOR and other related corporations. Transco had already been privatized before this. This will mean the dismissal of 11,000 government employees. Employees of five agencies that are set to be privatized are likewise facing an intense battle after the Department of Housing and Urban Development was set up. Lately, BIR employees resisted plans to privatize the bureau through the formation of the Internal Revenue Management Authority (IRMA) that would terminate more than 6,000 employees. There are also proposals to privatize the Bureau of Customs, which will also lead to the dismissal of employees. The Macapagal-Arroyo regime uses a tactic that had been tried in the past by the Estrada regime to dismiss employees. Instead of going through the long and complicated process of termination, it merely cuts off funds for an agency, until the latter is eventually dissolved. Estrada did just that in the case of the National Stud Farm and the Economic Intelligence and Investigation Bureau. In September, Macapagal-Arroyo attempted to dissolve 14 small government agencies and terminate 10,000 employees, allegedly as a cost-cutting measure by the government. She said that up to P1.6 billion would be saved if the government does away with the budget allocations for these agencies. But Macapagal-Arroyo was forced to shelve plans to dissolve the agencies due to intense opposition from the employees. She was compelled to immediately call off plans to dissolve the National Printing Office (NPO) under the Office of the Press Secretary after NPO employees disclosed that the real reason behind her plans to dissolve these agencies was her desire to subsume their operations to her minions and cronies. In fact, some of the agencies that are set to be dissolved like the NPO and the Telecommunications Office under the Department of Transportation and Communications are actually profitable and are not government liabilities. 
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