After a Victory: An Inevitable Counterattack
In Quezon City, the strike at Kowloon House has ended, but the struggle it revealed has only begun to take clearer shape.
For a brief moment, the sequence appeared familiar, almost reassuring in its symmetry. Workers organized, struck, and negotiated. Management resisted, calculated, and conceded—partially. A settlement was reached with the assistance of the National Conciliation and Mediation Board. A ₱20 wage increase was secured, higher than the earlier ₱13 offer, though still below the ₱25 that workers had pressed for in the final stages of bargaining.
It was not a decisive victory, bur rather a compromise between workers and management. But it was, undeniably, a victory for the workers to retain their jobs and to retain the provisions of the agreement.
And in the history of labor relations—whether in the Philippines or elsewhere—such victories rarely stand unchallenged.
The Structure of Response
What followed the strike has begun to outline a pattern that observers of labor history would recognize immediately.
Within days of the agreement, labor groups reported that more than 80 workers faced dismissal following the planned closure of a noodle house and dimsum counter under a related management entity. The development, coming in the immediate aftermath of a settlement that included a “no retaliatory action” clause, has raised questions that go beyond contract interpretation.
It suggests a structural response. In the vocabulary of industrial relations, this response often arrives in the language of necessity: restructuring, cost rationalization, consolidation. The terminology is technical, but the effect is direct. Gains secured by labor are offset—if not reversed—through managerial decisions that reconfigure the workforce.
That the Kowloon dispute has moved from wage negotiations to job security in a matter of days is not incidental. It is illustrative.
Wages in an era of diminishing value
The strike itself was rooted in a straightforward demand: higher wages.
Workers affiliated with the Genuine Labor Organization of Workers in Hotel, Restaurant, and Allied Industries had initially sought a ₱50 daily increase, later lowering this to ₱35 in negotiations with Katipunan Food Services Inc.. Management’s ₱13 offer proved insufficient, and the dispute escalated into a six-day strike.
The eventual ₱20 increase must be understood not in isolation but in context. It is an increment layered onto a wage structure that has struggled to keep pace with the cost of living.
In Metro Manila, where prices for transportation, food, and housing have steadily risen, the real value of wages has eroded. Even mandated adjustments—such as those under Wage Order No. NCR-26—have not fully bridged the gap between nominal earnings and actual purchasing power.
The workers’ claim that as much as ₱108 in daily wage adjustments had gone unfulfilled underscores the cumulative nature of this erosion. The strike, in this sense, was not only about immediate gains but about recovering lost ground.
Management and the Economics of Constraint
Management’s position reflects a different, though equally real, set of pressures.
Rising energy costs, linked to global oil markets, have increased production expenses. Supply chains have become more volatile. Consumer demand has shown signs of fluctuation.
“The global oil crisis has severely crippled operations, causing production costs to soar while customer volume drops,” management counsel has said.
The company has also emphasized the benefits provided to workers—bonuses, paid leave, health coverage—as part of its overall compensation structure.
From this perspective, wage increases are not merely a question of fairness but of sustainability. Each adjustment must be absorbed within a financial model already under strain.
And yet, labor representatives have pointed to reported figures suggesting substantial daily income, raising questions about the distribution of resources. The company has not publicly confirmed those figures.
The tension, then, is not simply between labor and capital, but between competing narratives of constraint.
The Counterattack as the Management's Strategy
If the strike represents an assertion of labor’s collective power, the subsequent layoffs represent a recalibration by management.
This is not an isolated phenomenon. In many labor disputes, particularly those that result in concessions, management responses take the form of structural adjustments—closures, retrenchments, reassignments—that serve to reassert control.
The inclusion of a “no retaliatory action” clause in the settlement was intended to prevent such outcomes. That its scope is now being tested highlights the limits of contractual safeguards when confronted with broader managerial discretion.
The layoffs, if confirmed and sustained, would signal not only a business decision but a strategic one: a redefinition of the terms under which labor’s gains are recognized.
The Digital Dimension of Labor
The Kowloon dispute has also revealed a transformation in the terrain of labor struggle.
Where earlier movements relied on physical mobilization—pickets, pamphlets, assemblies—today’s disputes unfold simultaneously in digital space. Workers and their allies have used social media to amplify their demands, shape public perception, and exert pressure beyond the immediate workplace.
Allen Gumiran described the campaign as “one of the most explicit na infowar campaigns that the natdems ran, hopefully they will make it a regular fare.”
“Protests are larping except if you win,” he observed. “In the past, protests were inevitably accompanied by handing out flyers. Now that the internet has compressed the rail, post, and telegraph into one, many still want to fight the struggle as if we are living in 1966.”
“The digital info war is comparable to drones yeeting tanks and IFVs.”
The analogy is stark, but its implication is clear: information has become an instrument of struggle, and visibility a form of leverage.
A Pattern that's Recognized
For labor leaders, the sequence of events has not come as a surprise.
Elmer Labog of Kilusang Mayo Uno described the aftermath in terms that captured both frustration and recognition: “It is truly frustrating to deal with this family. The generation we dealt with in the Kowloon company. The victory we achieved in the strike, which we celebrated together that night, was doused with cold water because the next day, every worker was deprived of their livelihood.”
The statement, translated from the original, reflects not only an immediate reaction but an understanding of pattern—of victory followed by reversal, of concession followed by countermeasure.
The Necessity of Continuity
If the counterattack is structural, then the response must be as well.
The return to institutions—the appeal to the National Conciliation and Mediation Board, the invocation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement—is an essential step. But it is not, in itself, sufficient.
What the Kowloon case suggests is the need for continuity in organization and action. The strike cannot be treated as a discrete event, concluded with the signing of an agreement. It must be understood as part of an ongoing process, one that extends into the enforcement of terms, the defense of gains, and the anticipation of responses.
In this sense, the struggle moves beyond the picket line into a broader field—legal, economic, and informational.
An Unresolved Question
The events at Kowloon House raise a question that resonates beyond a single workplace.
Can labor secure gains that endure, or will each advance be met with a corresponding retreat? Can agreements translate into stability, or will they remain provisional, subject to reinterpretation and revision?
The answer is not yet clear. But what is clear is that the strike has revealed more than it resolved. It has exposed the interplay of wages and costs, of power and response, of action and counteraction.
In the kitchens where work has resumed, the immediate conflict has passed. But the conditions that produced it remain.
And as history suggests, they will produce it again—unless the balance that defines them is, at last, fundamentally altered.