Drivers and workers from the FOC Transportation Corporation have been continuing their strike at the bus company’s terminal in Barangay Comon, Infanta, Quezon for over a month. The buses ply the Infanta-Lucena City route.

Led by the United Rank and File Association of FOC Transportation Corp, workers launched the strike amid the denial of their rights, including the very meager separation pay the management offered, and the management’s refusal to enter into negotiations. According to the management, the company it is set to close because of financial losses.

“We are on strike because of the management’s continued refusal to give what is due to the workers. We are extremely underpaid, and we are seemingly expected to simply beg and ask for morsels,” the union said.

Instead of addressing the demands, the company filed charges of grave coercion and illegal strike against the workers and the organizers from the Federation of Free Workers, to which the union is affiliated.

“None of the workers is happy with our already month-long strike, but we will keep asserting our rights. What is clear to us is that FOC Transportation management wants to dismantle our union. This cannot happen, this is not just,” according to the union.

Pagkakaisa ng mga Samahan ng Tsuper at Operator Nationwide (Piston) chairperson and Makabayan Coalition former senatorial candidate Mody Floranda expressed support for the strike of the drivers and workers.

“Salute to the courage shown by the [union] in standing firm in launching the strike to fight for their labor rights,” he said. The Piston leader said a month-long strike is no small matter, so its continuation is already considered a victory.

“We have the right to fight against the absence of a CBA, the dismissal or harassment of union members, and this bogus company ‘closure’, which we know only aims to lay off workers,” Floranda said.

He explained that FOC Transport Corp management’s harassment demonstrates the decay in the backward and profit-oriented public transportation system in the country. “All of us are challenged to raise the level of the struggle, beyond management, and toward holding accountable the Marcos Jr regime and the foreign interests for stunting and exploiting the transportation industry,” Floranda concluded.