By RAYMUND B. VULLANUEVA
Kodao Productions/Bulatlat.com
KMU secretary general Jerome Adonis says workers need a champion in the Senate
A labor leader is Makabayan’s third bet in next year’s senatorial derby, promising to fight for national and social progress on the basis of genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization.
Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) secretary general Jerome Adonis joins ACT Teachers’ Party Rep. France Castro and GABRIELA Women’s Party Rep. Arlene Brosas in the Makabayan slate for the 2025 national elections.
Adonis announced his decision Friday, August 2, to be a candidate during a labor union’s general meeting in Cabuyao, Laguna.
“The 2025 elections will be an important platform to push the agenda of workers and the people forward. We will present the national democratic agenda real solutions to the crises besetting our people,” he said.
Worker, progressive, nationalist
Adonis, 52, is a 22-year veteran of the country’s militant labor movement.
Born March 1972 in Ligao, Albay, he said his family left Bicol due to intense militarization during the Ferdinand Marcos Sr. dictatorship.
He is the eldest of five siblings and was forced to become a breadwinner at a young age.
At age 16, he started working in construction and in a carton factory.
At the onset of the implementation of the Wage Rationalization Act of 1989 (Republic Act No. 6727) Adonis revealed he suffered the brunt of salary repression as a worker of PNO Electro-Industrial Corporation, a semiconductor factory in Pasay City.
In 1992, he became a bus conductor At Pasvil-Pascual Liner Incorporated and subsequently joined the workers union PASVIL/Pascual Liner Inc. Workers Union – NAFLU – KMU.
The union went on strike in 1995 to oppose the company’s exploitative and oppressive policies against workers.
He then became a full-time labor organizer with KMU since 2002, working among fellow conductors and drivers in bus lines and jeepneys as well as among harbor workers in Manila’s Port Area.
Adonis had been elected and reelected as KMU secretary general since 2015.
Earlier this year, he was elected second deputy secretary of the International League of Peoples’ Struggles. Reposted by 
