UN agency to probe labor rights abuses in RP

MANILA, Philippines—The International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations’ arm for labor concerns, is sending a fact-finding mission to the Philippines to investigate complaints of trade-union rights violations in the country.

The investigation from Sept. 22 to 29 would seek to determine if the Philippines under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been violating its international commitments to respect freedom of association, collective bargaining, and the right to strike.

The government agreed to the ILO mission during the annual International Labor Conference held in Geneva, Switzerland, in June.

The mission is in response to complaints of military involvement in union-busting and the killing of labor leaders, among other things, filed by the labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) in 2006.

KMU spokesperson Wendell Gumban said ILO representatives from Geneva, in coordination with ILO Asia-Pacific, will interview workers’ organizations and inspect two major manufacturing plants in Central and southern Luzon.

They will also meet with the families of victims and survivors of extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and harassment related to labor disputes.

The KMU will launch in Manila today “ILO Watch,” an alliance of civil society groups formed to monitor the high-level ILO mission and to intensify the campaign against labor rights violations.

KMU chair Elmer Labog in a statement scored the Department of Labor and Employment for “bragging” about the general state of “industrial peace” in the country, saying that the trade union movement in the country has experienced its “most severe blows” in recent history.

According to KMU, 92 trade union leaders have been murdered since President-Arroyo assumed office in 2001.

The group suspects the killings were “extrajudicial” hits conducted by military-backed death squads, which indicates the Arroyo administration’s disregard for human rights, including labor organizing rights, it said. –Jerome Aning, Philippine Daily Inquirer with a report from Marlon Ramos