The Revolutionary Council of Trade Unions (RCTU), an allied organization of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, on May 1 called on the Filipino working class to take up the historic task of leading the people’s democratic revolution to liberate the country from US imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism. The group emphasized the importance of mass organizing among workers to carry this out.

According to the RCTU, the workers’ movement must overcome the political ills of legalism, economism, reformism, NGOism, and sectoralism to make a meaningful contribution to advancing the people’s war. It called to carry out the following tasks:

Organize the broadest number of workers, especially contractuals, to build, strengthen, and expand genuine, militant, and anti-imperialist unions on a massive scale. Defy legal restrictions on who can be union members.

Mobilize union members to organize fellow workers in their home communities. They must organize urban poor, youth, and women in communities. This fulfills the task of uniting workers and other oppressed sectors as the backbone of the urban mass movement.

Vigorously advance union and economic struggles such as wage increases, the junking of contractualization and flexible labor, and others. Workers must be led and firmly united for national struggles.

Carry out all forms of propaganda and study to advance campaigns and mass struggles. Propagate the RCTU’s analyses of daily issues, and present the alternative program of the people’s democratic revolution.

In the field of organization, build branches of the Communist Party of the Philippines in enterprises to increase and strengthen revolutionary unions. Gather advanced workers into Red Workers’ Brigade (PBM) units in every department or production line in enterprises, in shifts, and/or in union committees.

The Party branch, paired with PBM units, will form the revolutionary council inside the workplace. The growing number of revolutionary councils will form the RCTU national formation. Strengthening the RCTU will mean expanding support for the armed struggle of the New People’s Army (BHB) in the countryside.

RCTU in Laguna. The RCTU distributed leaflets containing its statements on April 29-30 in the urban centers of Laguna. Hundreds of leaflets were handed out to urge workers to take action and join the people’s democratic revolution.