The ILO High-Level Mission: Background and Expectations

In line with the upcoming International Labor Organization High-Level Mission (ILO-HLM), the ILO Watch was formed to maximize the Mission in exposing and fighting trade union rights repression in the country. It is spearheaded by the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), the national labor center that filed in 2006 the complaint from which the fact-finding mission was conceived as a response by the ILO; the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR), an independent non-profit non-government institution focused on monitoring and documenting labor rights violations, which provided many of the case reports in the complaint; the Pro-Labor Legal Assistance Center (PLACE), which served as legal counsel for the complaint; and the Anakpawis Partylist, which represents workers in Congress among other marginalized sectors.  The ILO Watch aims to be a broad network that will gather all initiatives for the campaign against labor rights repression from various groups and individuals.

The ILO is United Nations’ tripartite agency responsible for drawing up and ensuring the compliance of its member states to international labor standards. It was founded in 1919, and the Philippines has been a member since 1946.

ILO representatives from Geneva, Switzerland, in coordination with ILO Asia-Pacific, will conduct consultations with the Philippine government and workers’ organizations, and inspect two major manufacturing plants in Central and Southern Luzon. The Mission will be on September 22-29. They will also meet with the families of victims and survivors of extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and labor-related harassments. Representatives of the ILO who will conduct the mission are Tim de Meyer (Standards Specialist, ILO Subregional Office, Bangkok), Cleopatra Doumbia-Henry (Director, International Labor Standards Department, ILO Geneva), and Karen Curtis (Deputy Director, International Labor Standards Department, ILO Geneva).

When the complaint was filed to the ILO in September 18, 2006, 64 workers have already fallen victims to extra-judicial killings since Arroyo’s presidency in 2001. After the complaint, 28 more workers were added to the list. Also, a relatively new form of repression hit the workers since last year after the complaint: using trumped up criminal charges to detain workers. Multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder, arson, and other grave criminal charges were slapped to more than a hundred workers even without preliminary investigation. Six have already been jailed because of this. More and more factories have been turned into military camps to silence unions.

These are but some of the grave examples of trade-union rights violations we hope to highlight with the upcoming ILO mission. We hope that the Mission will bring added pressure to the government to stop its rampant violations of workers’ rights, and the gravity of the issue will be exposed to and will draw support from the international community. ###