In California, Democrats propose $25...

PAGE A1 roughly 100,000 workers statewide, similar proposals have previously faced strong opposition from the health industry.

If lawmakers approve the bill and Gov. Gavin Newsom signs it, one labor leader estimated, 1.5 million California workers could get a wage hike come January 2024.

Last year, the union spent about $11 million to promote local $25 minimum wage measures in 10 Southern California cities while hospitals and health care facilities spent $12 million against them.

That fight yielded an opposite decision in November in two cities where the measure made the ballot: Inglewood voters approved raises at private hospitals and dialysis clinics, while voters in Duarte rejected the wage hike.

During the campaign, a ballot issue committee with funding from Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, Adventist Health, Cedars-Sinai, Dignity Health, and other hospitals and health systems warned that a $25 minimum wage would raise their costs.

Earlier this month, the California Hospital Association launched a campaign to ask lawmakers for an extra $1.5 billion in the state budget for Medi-Cal, the state’s insurance program for people with low incomes and disabilities. In a Feb. 9 memo, Carmela Coyle, the association’s president and CEO, wrote that hospitals need urgent financial relief, citing inflation and mounting costs: “Help is needed — immediately.”

Meanwhile, the nursing home industry has said it wants to pay workers more but can’t because the state reimburses them too little for patients enrolled in MediCal. And the dialysis industry has shelled out more than $300 million over the past six years to defeat three statewide ballot measures sponsored by SEIU-UHW to increase staffing at clinics.

Negotiations for a statewide $25 minimum wage collapsed in the legislature last summer, in part because union leaders and the hospital association had tied the raise to a delay in costly earthquake upgrades at hospitals. The deal was scuttled by the California Nurses Association, the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council, and other unions concerned about their workers’ safety. The California Dialysis Council also opposed it.

Durazo said she’s willing to hear hospitals’ concerns about loosening seismic retrofit standards but prefers to treat the two issues separately.

The state has also recognized the need to attract and retain workers by setting aside roughly $1 billion to help the industry address workforce shortages. But labor leaders say workers need a financial incentive.

“We have a workforce that has just been through the wringer in the last three years,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW. “And lots of health care workers decided, you know, this is just too difficult. It’s too exhausting. It’s too dangerous.”

Raising the minimum wage would bring families out of poverty, said Joanne Spetz, director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California-San Francisco. But whether the bill will solve chronic workforce shortages is unclear because wages are just one factor.

Costlier employees could have negative consequences for health care facilities.

“If you don’t get higher reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers, then you’re gonna have to figure out how to absorb that cost increase,” Spetz said. “Or you just get rid of the worker.”

Since Inglewood passed its measure, the wage hike has transformed Byron Vasquez’s life, giving him more time with his family. A distribution technician at Centinela Hospital Medical Center, Vasquez earned $21.17 an hour restocking supplies on every floor. But he said that he needed to take additional work to support his wife and daughter — and that he often missed family celebrations.

“Before the increase, I was working two or three jobs to make ends meet,” said Vasquez, who until recently worked weekend shifts at a residential care center in Beverly Hills and drove for Uber.

“It was not fun because there’s really no time off.” (Samantha Young/Kaiser Health News)

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

But what does this mean for the Philippines, which was once home to massive U.S. military presence after World War II?

Expanded Edca

Last Feb. 2, as Austin arrived at the headquarters of the Department of National Defense (DND) in Quezon City on Feb. 2, Galvez said the Philippines granted the U.S. access to four more military bases, amid concerns over China’s continued aggression in the West Philippine Sea and a potential invasion of Taiwan.

The agreement is an expansion of the Edca, which the late President Benigno Aquino III signed with the U.S. in 2014— which the Supreme Court ruled was an executive agreement that was part of the larger agreements VFA and the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaties that needed Philippine Senate nod.

With the expansion, the DND said the Philippines and the U.S. are “proud to announce their plans to accelerate the full implementation of the Edca with the agreement to designate four ‘agreed locations’ in strategic areas of the country and the substantial completion of the projects in the existing five ‘agreed locations’.”

The five existing “agreed locations” are the Antonio Bautista Air Base in Palawan, Basa Air Base in Pampanga, Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in Cebu and Lumbia Air Base in Cagayan de Oro City. The one in Palawan is the closest to the Kalayaan Island Group, while the one in Nueva Ecija is the country’s largest military camp.

As to where the new Edca bases will be located is not yet certain, with Galvez saying that the government is still consulting with the local governments concerned.

“We withhold the announcement of the Edca sites because our protocols and also our diplomatic notes have not been completed.”

“We need to complete all the staff work, including our consultations with the local government units,” Galvez said.

But looking back, some military officials revealed last year that the U.S. asked for access to military bases in Cagayan, Zambales, Isabela and Palawan, provinces that face either the West Philippine Sea or Taiwan.

PH-U.S. relations

The Philippines has been a treaty ally of the U.S. since 1951, when it signed with the MDT that bound the two countries to support each other should one of them be attacked by external forces—an agreement which the U.S. said is a foundation for close security cooperation between the two countries.

But even before the MDT was signed, the Philippines had allowed the U.S. to establish and operate air and naval bases for 99 years in 1947 through the Military Bases Agreement (MBA), which was later amended to reduce the tenure to only 25 years. As a result, the agreement was expected to end in 1991.

The U.S. had the chance to extend its tenure, but the Philippine Senate rejected in 1991 the RP-U.S. Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace that would have given the U.S. 10 more years at the Subic Bay Naval Base, which was the United States’ last military outpost in Southeast Asia then.

The MBA ended in 1992.

However, in 1998 and 1999, the VFA was signed and ratified, providing simplified access procedures to the Philippines for U.S. service members on official business and a series of procedures for how to resolve issues that may come up as a result of U.S. service members being present in the Philippines.

As the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said, the VFA “provides clear procedures and processes for how to handle issues that arise as a result of the presence of U.S. service members in the Philippines,” like what happened in 2015, when “a U.S. Marine was tried and convicted of killing a Filipina.”

It was referring to the case of American soldier Joseph Scott Pemberton, who was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. But because of the VFA, he served his sentence in a facility established by the Philippines and the U.S. rather than the New Bilibid Prison. He was released in 2020 through absolute pardon granted by Duterte, a move condemned by progressive groups.

The CSIS also said the VFA is a “political signal of the closeness” of the alliance between the Philippines and the U.S., with “analysts and former officials believing that signaling close ties between the U.S. and the Philippines supports efforts to deter China from further encroaching on Philippines’ sovereignty.”

Over 15 years later, the Edca was signed, allowing the U.S. to preposition personnel, equipment and supplies at selected military bases in the Philippines to quickly respond in times of natural disasters and other crises. This, however, was criticized as a violation of the Constitution.

As explained by international studies professor Renato de Castro, the agreement allows U.S. service members to use facilities owned and controlled by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), but ensures that the base commander of the Philippines retains free access to those locations.

“Likewise, the U.S. military will be able to build or improve the infrastructure inside these installations, but Philippine forces will be able to jointly use them. Any construction and other activities within Philippine bases requires the consent of the Philippine-U.S. Mutual Defense Board and Security Engagement Board,” he said.

Stronger defense?

The DND said Edca is designed to promote between the Philippines and the U.S. interoperability, capacity building toward AFP modernization, strengthening AFP for external defense, maritime security, maritime domain awareness, and humanitarian assistance and disaster response.

De Castro explained in 2016 that once the Edca is implemented, a contingent of U.S. service members will be deployed to the Philippines on a short-term and rotational basis:

“This will probably include the stationing of a squadron of U.S. Marine fighter planes in a Philippine Air Force base for six months,” he said.

He said U.S. service members will be stationed in the country through these access arrangements—the forward operating sites, which are expandable and partially equipped facilities with limited U.S. military support presence, and cooperative security locations, which are facilities maintained by the Philippines with little or no constant U.S. presence.

The presence of the U.S. military will strengthen the Philippines’ resolve to uphold its territorial and maritime claims in the West Philippine Sea, De Castro, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Albert Del Rosario Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said in a CSIS column.

“By increasing the U.S.’ ability to respond to crises in the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea), the Edca could also test American credibility regarding its defense commitment to the Philippines,” he said.

“Though the maritime row in the South China Sea will be a long-term security challenge and will never be solved solely through force, the potential for an armed conflict requires the presence of an effective U.S. deterrent force in the region. The Edca is aimed at producing such a deterrence posture,” he added.

Take as an example what former SC Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said after a China Coast Guard ship struck a patrol vessel of the Philippines with military-grade laser that harmed some of its crew, an action which he said constitutes an armed attack: “The Philippines can thus invoke the MDT.”

With China’s aggression, Carpio told ANC on Wednesday, February 15 that the Philippines really has to think of strengthening its alliances, stressing that “you have to look at the history of the South China Sea”—1995, the Mischief Reef was seized; 2012, the Scarborough Shoal was seized; 2017, Sandy Cay was seized. He said China’s actions are not a reaction to the recent visits of Austin and even U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris to the Philippines, saying that China has long planned this. With this, he said setting aside the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s 2016 decision and setting aside relations with treaty allies will not stop China. “We have to use allies,” he said, taking as an example countries that want the U.S. to stay as an assurance that they will not be left behind.

“Us, what is our assurance?

Our assurance is Edca,” he said, explaining that while the Philippines does not want to station U.S. service members, equipment should be kept in bases so that the military can use it when there is a crisis.

Fast response, economic gains

Back in 2014, the DND released some of the key aspects of the Edca, including its purpose and how to attain its objectives. As it said then, “we are currently holding joint training exercises such as Balikatan and undertaking humanitarian assistance and disaster relief cooperation such as in the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan, the strongest typhoon to hit land).”

It explained then that “to improve on the above, we intend to undertake additional cooperation by way of construction of facilities and infrastructure upgrades, and storage and prepositioning of defense and humanitarian assistance and disaster response equipment, supplies and material.”

Looking back, when Yolanda, which was considered the strongest to ever hit land, struck the Visayas in 2013, the VFA allowed for some 13,000 military men, 66 aircraft, and 12 naval vessels to deliver more than 2,500 tons of relief goods and evacuate over 21,000 people.

Likewise, Galvez said the Edca expansion is not only about security and defense but also economic gains, especially for the communities and local government units (LGUs) that will host the military bases, aside from strengthening their protection from the effects of climate change through intensified mitigation efforts and more immediate disaster response.

“It is our fervent hope that our LGUs will also realize that the Edca is not just about security. We enjoin them to look into potential foreign investments and economic development that Edca sites will bring to their communities, as well as the enhancement of the protection of our areas that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change and the quicker response and mitigation if our front liners are called to action,” he said.

To date, the U.S. has allocated over $82 million in infrastructure investments in the existing five sites.

As written by William Berry Jr., “most Filipino opponents and proponents of the bases agree that the bases do contribute to the economy,” however, “they tend to disagree as to whether the Philippines could make the necessary adjustments to absorb the economic dislocations if the bases close.”

He stated that the Philippines has received $481 million in U.S. compensation yearly as a result of the MBA, but “compensation in the form of economic and military assistance programs is only part of the economic equation.”

“Employment opportunities, local contracting, American support for international loans to the Philippines, and the possible attraction of foreign investment are also some of the economic effects involved directly or indirectly with the presence of the bases,” Berry said in his article “The Effects of the U.S. Military Bases on the Philippine Economy.”

He said employment was a big problem for the Corazon Aquino administration then, not only because of the economic decline which took place in the last years of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s regime, but also because of the expanding population that placed a strong demand for the government to create new jobs.

Back then, the U.S. military bases was the second largest single employer in the Philippines after the government itself. Berry said at the conclusion of the fiscal year ending in September 1987 that the bases employed 68, 514 Filipinos—23,168 fulltime employees, 22,834 contract employees, 22,068 domestics and private hires, and 444 concessionaires.

“Wages paid to base employees in 1987 totaled more than $96 million,” he said. Likewise, the MBA amendments included provisions encouraging the U.S. to increase local procurement of products required by the bases, and the U.S. has attempted to comply with these obligations, Berry said.

Clark Air Base, for the fiscal year ending in September 1987, purchased more than $53 million worth of goods and services from Filipino contractors, ranging from cement for aircraft runways to food, like vegetables, sold in the commissary. Then at the Subic Naval Base, the U.S. spent more than $150 million.

Concerns still persist

But of course, this is just one side of the picture as concerns

Enrile thanks God, well-wishers as...

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God for this day!”

A former justice secretary and defense minister during the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Enrile’s alleged ambush in 1972 was used as a pretext by the late strongman to declare martial law.

In 1986, he broke away from the administration and supported the People Power Revolution that resulted in Marcos’ ouster.