Full Monty: The Philippine Version

The Philippines National Steel Corporation, the country’s largest and only rolling mill plant went on rapid expansion and upgrading of its Iligan facilities in the decade of the 80’s. It was a series of FYEP’s or Five Year Expansion Programs which hoped to finally make its integrated steel plant a reality.

At the turn of the 90’s, signs indicated a short lived progress; ther party’s over. Finally, in 1994, the first of its continuing retrenchment came. I was with the first batch. Not even the entry of Malaysia’s wing Tiek Group and later the Hottic Group, touted as earlier as the saviors but turned out to be just its opposite, could reverse the slide.

Finally, almost at the end of 1999, after 5 years of uncertainty and hemorrhage, the inevitable came. The company and the plant went on complete shutdown. By then, the company’s best and brightest, technical and managerial men especially, went on exodus mostly abroad, like the uS, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

NSC’s and the Philippines’ loss, the gain of these supposed to be industrialized countries. A classic “brain drain.”

Meanwhile, “Steeltown,” once a bustling housing community of NSC’s employees almost became a “Ghostown,” exactly a similar acsene carved out in the movie Full Monty. Lonely, deserted---a gory reminder of steel glory lost.

Barack Obama and Full Monty

What has Barack Obama got to do with Full Monty? Obama is a US Democrat presidential candidate this year. Full Monty is a lesser known movie (set in Great Britain) in the late 90’s until it got an Oscar’s nomination. Absolutely nothing, or so it seems. Except that Full Monty is a story of displaced British steel workers (presumably British Steel) and how they cope up with unemployment and a bleak future for their families. From steel men, they became or forced to become stage dancers just to eke out a living, finally doing a full monty (British slang for “ going all the way “i.e., nude) as the curtains fall at the end of the movie.

Barack Obama takes pride in listing or justifying his experience (during campaign speeches, interviews and TV debates with another US Democrat presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Clinton) as community organizer and helping US steel workers in the Chicago area who were displaced by the fall of the US steel industry. This was in 1985 to 1987 and this is how they are connected.

This “ steel men “ experience factor in the resume of Obama may yet catapult him as the first ever black president of the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America. If ever it happens, the question will be: will the steel industry be in his agenda and put back the glory years of the US steel industry who has been since those years in the back seat of surging steel economies of Japan, Europe, South Korea, Russia and recently, China and India.

No, I don’t think Barack Obama did a full monty at that time.