MANILA, Philippines — The House Committee on Labor and Employment has approved a bill penalizing interference with the organization and administration of labor unions and workers' associations, including forcing union members to give up membership.
The bill also includes villification, red-tagging and house visits by the military and police to tell members to disaffiliate as forms of interference that violate the Labor Code and the 1987 Constitution.
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At the committee hearing on Wednesday, government representatives — including from the Department of Labor and Employment — said that they saw no need for it because the right to form unions is already protected by law.
"Our sentiments are the same as DOLE," Employers Confederation of the Philippines legal service manager Robert Maronilla said, adding the organization believes in fiathful compliance with labor laws.
"We already have [the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity], which already criminalizes any act of persecution...on political grounds," lawyer Maria Consuelo Bacay, director of the Bureau of Labor Relations, also said.
Despite these protections, labor organizers have reported harassment of their members and campaigns to dissuade workers from joining or maintaining membership in unions and workers' associations.
"We have seen many unions face many forms of attacks," Kamille Deligente of the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights, told the committee in Filipino. "House-to-house visits in the communities, harassment for them to disaffiliate from their unions."
Rep. Raoul Manuel (Kabataan party-list) , one of the authors of the Anti-Union Interference bill, said that the protections in the Labor Code and the constitution "need a concrete enabling law that will flesh out the prohibited acts which will constitute interference" by employers and by government agencies and personnel.
Among the forms of anti-union interference listed in the bill are forbidding workers from organizing and joining organizations, requiring or forcing them to relinquish membership, and discriminating against union members.
The bill also penalizes employers and government agencies and personnel who vilify, label or red-tag workers' organizations and their members "on the basis of mere membership or affiliation."
Elmer Labog,chairperson of Kilusang Mayo Uno said the labor sector is united in the position that workers should be protected by "undue interference" in organizing and running unions. He said attacks and harassment as well as "information campaigns" against labor unions organizing have created "a climate which impedes workers from freely exercising their rights."
Lawyer Luke Espiritu of Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino said government should help give employees and workers "a proper platform to negotiate with their employers." He added that giving workers more freedom should also mean "strenghtening safeguards against management forming their own unions."
Elizabeth Doco, union representative of the Philippine Government Employees' Association, said employers should not fear the formation of unions, adding "gone are the days of shouting matches between employees and employers."
She said that unions and work associations can contribute to "collaboration...and a harmonious relationship with management [and] this will translate to better services to the people we serve, especially for those of us in the government."
In a statement on Thursday, Manuel called the committee's approval of the bill "a victory for all workers and workers’ organizations subjected to harassment, profiling, surveillance, forced disaffiliation, red-tagging, and terror-tagging by companies, government agencies, state forces, especially the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict."