What is CPM? The Center for People's Media (CPM) is a social research collaboration between Ph.D. student Daniel Rudin and media advocates in Manila, Philippines. Gifts to this effort will help the UCSC-based Rudin develop tools to improve the CPM's citizen labor journalism.
Who is CPM? CPM is supervised by People's Media Advocacy, Asia, a Philippine-based NGO that has received support from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, the UCSC Blum Center, BigIdeas@Berkeley, Public Services International, Building and Woodworking International, the ASEAN Services Employees Trade Union Council, and the Union for Canada. In 2018, CPM partnered with the UCSC Everett Program to develop social media training modules. This year PMAA will collaborate with students at ICCT University in Rizal to develop its capacity to produce citizen media.
What is the impact? It is necessary to ensure safe work for all, yet the decline in unions has impacted working conditions and wages. ASEAN union density is at an all-time low, and contractual work proliferates. As a result of noncompliance and a decline in permanent work, our theory of change posits that these problems must be met with strong civil society action. Despite their decline, Philippine trade unions are leading a campaign against precarious work. Nevertheless, these very unions fall short in their campaign because of their lack of capacity and inability to reach the general public. PMAA aims to "fill the gap" with a two-pronged solution.
Number one, PMAA has built up the Center for People's Media (CPM) to act as a conduit between the general public and knowledgeable news and labor advocates. The CPM model consists of social news trainings, usually hosted by Philippine and ASEAN trade unions. We provide social news and digital tools, and train labor leaders and rank-and-file unionists in media skills. These trainings have been held in cities throughout the Philippines, Malaysia, and Cambodia, and usually result in social media teams that pursue advocacy, organization, and defense of labor laws in their workplace and regions. Our own social news intersects with the output of our trainees, who provide us with photos, press releases, and video reports.

Number two, we provide digital tools for the citizen journalist, giving them a voice through our social media platform and connecting them to organizations that can address or amplify their concerns. We receive personal messages and emails asking for advice on specific labor issues. We then connect these individuals directly with labor advocates within the scope of our network, and leverage our own network in the mainstream news to broadcast their concerns. In this way, CPM advocates for citizens working outside the borders of the labor movement or in the informal sector.

Tracking impact: To track social impact, we monitor participant success rates at contract negotiations, legal reform, labor violation reporting, and other civil society activity. In past years, we have publicized management interference in the certification elections of a union at the Yokohama factory. A post on the extrajudicial killing of a labor leader reached more than 80,000 viewers on Facebook. Our Facebook page has 33,000 members. We also assisted 300 terminated Pizza Hut workers—we trained the workers, used our social news network, and leveraged our news media network, convincing CNN Philippines to cover the story. In days, the illegally terminated workers were returned to work.

Hacienda Salud

NEGROS OCCIDENTAL, Philippines – Rolando Panggo was not a dancer but he loved to dance – when drunk, during parties organized by his labor group and special occasions at home. He was a shy and quiet man. But when inebriated, the myth of Bacchus became perceived reality through his dancing. There was less dancing when Rolando, nicknamed Lando, took upon himself the task of organizing a group of long-time sugar cane plantation workers to help them fight for better wages. Lando is known as ‘Nong Lando to most of his comrades in the local labor sector, where he has been a labor organizer for Partido Manggagawa in Negros Occidental province for over 2 decades. (‘Nong is a shortened form of the word Manong, a vernacular term of endearment for an older brother.) Through the country’s agrarian reform program, ‘Nong Lando was resolute in helping these rural workers who look up to him finally own their due share of the land that they and their fathers’ fathers have tilled for over half a century. On November 29, 2014, Nong Lando died. He was on his way home riding a motorcycle with his cousin, when a car blocked their way and an unidentified man alighted to point a gun at them. The man dragged Lando to the side of the National Highway, shot him in the head, and took off. Lando’s body lay right beside the tall, blade-like, and forest green grasses of sugar cane his province is known for. He was proclaimed dead on arrival at the town’s infirmary. Lando’s youngest daughter Lea Jane still believes her father is coming back home. At night, as Lando’s grieving widow tucks in the 4-year-old kid to sleep, Leah Jane releases an innocent smile and tells her mom she is still waiting for Papa. Demolition of houses Nong Lando’s death has dampened organizing efforts at Hacienda Salud, where long-time tenant-workers are taking their chance to become land-owners. “’Yung iba, hindi maka-intindi. Parang natakot na (Others don’t understand. It’s like they were consumed with fear),” said Jose Julo Dablo, president of the Hacienda Salud Farm Workers Association (HASAFAWA). Like many labor organizers, the late Nong Lando was in charge of morale – keeping the workers’ spirits hopeful in the face of great tribulation. The acts of intimidation by the arendo or the plantation’s lessee increased after Lando’s death, said 37-year-old Maria (alias), wife of one the rural workers. Routinely, Maria would help out her husband in the daily tasks at the hacienda (estate) – planting the cut stalks of cane, ploughing the land, and pulling out weeds. A group is then contracted to harvest the canes for mass sale at the local sugar refinery. The hacienda, located at the village of Romirang in Negros Occidental’s town of Isabela, has been home to dozens of families whose ancestors lived and died as farm workers there. These generations of families have built their homes in the hacienda, but all of them were at the beck and call of one arendo after another through the years. HASAFAWA officer Mary Grace Narciso said the groups’ land dispute with the plantation’s owner – who is not in the Philippines but has leased out the land to a local businessman – angered the lessee. The lessee had allegedly pressured them to withdraw the case through various forms of harassment, including firing farm workers and demolishing the houses in the hacienda passed on from generation to generation of farm workers. Over 32 houses were demolished in 2015 – all erected by families who have applied as agrarian reform-beneficiaries with the help of Lando. Since then, the farm workers who were driven out of the hacienda they were born into have tried their luck in industries unfamiliar to them – as drivers of local public transport vehicles, for example. Some of them are still hunting for jobs, making no income in the meantime. Maria herself is starting to doubt if their struggle for land ownership will bear fruit, casually and with reservation asking in the vernacular to what end are their efforts for. But she immediately lets go of the thought, as she pulls her kid in between her thighs, as if the sight of the young child makes her forget.

Citra Mina Union investigates international labor dispute