Professionals should strive for Economic Security

Title

Language

English

Source

Socialism today August 1936

Year

1936

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

August, 1936 SOCIALISM TODAY Professionals Should Strive Security For Economic By PEDRO ABAD SANTOS Natio1w,l Chairman, P.F.S.U. The most vital problem confronting the professionals today is that of their economic security. It is an obvious fact· tha1;. thousands of professionals are unable to secure a decent living in their respective professions, not because their services are not necessary or they lack ability in their chosen careers, for I have seen topnotchers in bar examinations working in law offices at a salary of 50 pesos a month or even less, and while thousands of men and women and children are dying for want of medical assistance, scores of doctors do not earn enough money to pay for their licenses. Also when millions of children are deprived of even primary education, a legion of teachers are unemployed because of lack of government funds. The same problem confronts the dentist, the pharmacist, the engineer, the writer, the journalist and other professionals. As the professional workers attending the National Congress for Unemployment and Social Insurance recently held in Washington said: "The professional worker's relatively privileged . status is gone. He now knows unemployment, insecurity, hunger, want. More than half the architecets, engineers, chemists, research and laboratory workers in this country have no work. Teachers, nurses, and government employees in general have been let out in increasing numbers. Mu. sicians, artists, dentists, and physicians have suffered a steep decline in income because the great mass of people lack money to buy their services. . . The numbers of all these groups are being constantly augmented by college graduates for whom there is no future under our present system." And they stated the line of action they intended to follow for their security saying: "The professional worker ... has been turning increasingly to the promotion of bread ... groups· whose orientation is frankly economic and which seek security for their members through collective action on specific issues and joint action with other workers' groups on common issues." There is the remedy. We must unite with other workers to improve our common economic condition. So long as wealth is concentrated in the few of the privileged classes, while the great masses of the people, that is, the workers, farm-laborers and all wage-earners, become more and more impoverished, the profession~ al workers cannot have economic security and many will not secure even a decent standard of living. For how can the masses of the people pay for our professional serv' ices if they do not earn even enough for their miserable daily food? If the professionals want to improve their economic condition, they must forsake that old wrong notfon that they belong with the privileged cla~es. !On the contrary, we must be convinced that our interests and economic fate are bound up with those of the working class. By workers, I mean all who function in any part of the productive system, and the cultural, professional, technical and scientific services of society. We should not be condemned to. a wretched life, while the parasites, who exploit the workers live luxuriously f'rom the profits of their capital. , But we cannot secure the~e purposes by currying favor with the governing cliqu~, "upholding and Page 5· defending the Constitution" and "conducting a campaign of civic information among the masses .through public meeting and other means on what the government has done and is doipg for the good of the country," as some would have us do. So, we must attain economic security by uniting with other workers in demanding soci'al insurance, better wages and higher living standard for the working class. There is no other way. As it is now, we the workers are shouldering all the burden of the economic depression and our living st_andard is going from bad to worse, while the propietarios, hacenderos and capitalists enjoy themselves in luxury. The poor get poorer and the rich richer. Let us men and women of the socalled liberal professions shake off our middle class prejudices. and take our place on the side of the workers in the class struggle. Let us organize or, as they say no~, let us have our own racket, ~ut it must be a racket to fight· and end the biggest of all rackets, the capitalist racket. The Soviet Style ... (Continued from page 4) the birth to provide for supplementary feeding. In the case of funerals either of an insured person or of a dependent member of the insured's family, aid is ghren either in the form of _money or by the trade union itself undertaking the funeral and charging the cost to the social insurance fund. • Pensions are paid to persons who are permanently disabled either as the result of professional accident, occupational disease or of causes unrelated to his occupation, and the payment of pensions begins as soon as invalidism is established. There is no lapse of time.between the st6ppage of aid for temporary disability and the beginning of pension payments. The invalids ar~ divided into three groups depending on the extent to which they are disabled. The pension is a percentage of the averagl'! salary for the last twelve months of employment. The percentage is determined according to the group of invalids to ·which the person· ' . belongs; by the cause of invali~ism; an~ in some cases by the. type of work whicn (Continued on page 8)

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