Workplace Organizing Blues

For years, unions have complained to the DOLE that employers get the names of officers and members in new unions quickly, allowing unscrupulous employers to bust unions. DOLE has not moved a (dirty) finger to do anything about this.

This med-arbiter in Luzon is infamous for his shenanigans. He delays hearings, keeps decisions waiting. This time he overdid himself. He dismissed a petition for CE (certification election) to choose the exclusive collective bargaining agent in an electronics company on the pretext that the union did not submit one of the required documents.

Despite the (new) labor relations law, despite the watered-down rules issued, and despite DOLE’s oft-repeated commitment to speedy labor justice, a front-line med-arbiter in Southern Luzon continue ‘unintentionally’ delaying releasing decisions on certification elections in enterprises in export processing zones.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

19 January 2010, Quezon City. –While the most affected economic sectors are merely recovering from the global economic crunch, Philippine Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) remains robust. The sector remains as one of the major drivers of growth of the country’s economy.

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT, Philippines—A Filipino worker at the shipbuilding company Hanjin has filed a complaint for frustrated murder against a Korean foreman who allegedly attacked him with a metal flashlight in the head and face while at work on June 23.

Employers have perfected a new practice in attempting to bust unions. If warnings, threats, intimidation, harassment, transfers of union officers and activists, “carrots”, delaying tactics in hearings, etc. do not work, there is still that ‘legal means’ to thwart union formation . That’s the temporary restraining order (TRO).

“Management and workers must work hand in hand. Not only for the company’s success but also for the sake of the employees.” Brussels, 22 November 2005 (ICFTU OnLine): No union-busting activity. No unfair labour practices. No sexual harassment. Unlike many of EPZ employees in the Philippines, Josephine de Jesus doesn’t have much to complain about.…

Brussels, 21 November 2005 (ICFTU OnLine): What works in mobilizing Philippine workers? Send them short messages through their cell phones! Anna Lee M. Fos, Research Officer from Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), explains their strategy to combat tactics used to bust local unions in the export-processing zones (EPZs).

Whilst unquestionably constituting an important source of employment, these EPZs fuelling international trade and the profits of the world’s leading electronics and clothing brands, are characterised by their dismal working conditions. Conditions that are worsening as a result of the race to the bottom in labour standards following the deregulation of the global market.