MANILA, Philippines -- Militant labor groups on Saturday condemned Labor Secretary Arturo Brion's plea to the International Labor Organization (ILO) to reject the pending charges of extrajudicial killings of unionists and labor rights violations that were lodged against the Philippine government.

With his action, Brion has shown that Department of Labor and Employment is "one of the notorious government institutions oppressing the Filipino workers," according to the Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan (Pamantik or Cooperation of Workers in Southern Tagalog).

The complaint, filed by the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU or May One Movement) in October 2006, included cases of gross violations of workers' and human rights in the Southern Tagalog region.

"Workers and their unions have exhausted all legal means possible that their demands be addressed, including endless recourse to the DOLE. However, decisions favoring the workers were outrightly reversed by DOLE," Pamantik media officer Marlon Torres said in a statement.

KMU chair Elmer Labog called for Brion's resignation, saying, "He's supposed to advocate workers' rights and welfare but instead he is protecting and defending the criminals.”

In his speech before the ongoing ILO-hosted 96th International Labor Conference Brion in Geneva, Switzerland, Brion called the filing of the complaint premature and sinister and a kind of forum shopping.

He added that KMU and the other complainants were seeking media mileage and had failed to cooperate with local authorities in resolving their problems.

KMU and Pamantik, however, claimed the government was not really sincere in resolving the killings, abductions, and harassment of worker organizers and labor rights advocates in the country.

"If the government is really innocent and has no accountabilities in trade union repression and killings of labor leaders and advocates, then why is Brion acting so guilty and defensive?" Labog asked.

KMU, he said, has been tagged by the Arroyo administration as a front of outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), thus precluding any cooperation with the government to resolve the killings, which the KMU blamed on the military.

"We believe that DOLE has lost all the workers' trust as it has always been partial to the interest of the capitalists," Ramos said. "This is precisely why KMU filed the complaint with the ILO."

He recalled that automotive workers who tried to stage a rally at the DOLE main office in Manila to follow up the resolution of their labor case, he recalled, were instead dispersed and charged with sedition.

Another group of workers had to wait for five years for DOLE just to implement a Supreme Court order reinstating them, he recounted.

The cases were originally filed with ILO's Committee on Freedom of Association. However, the charges were raised last June 7 during the gathering of the larger Conference Committee on the Applications of Standards, which has supervisory powers over ILO members.

KMU international affairs department secretary Teresa Dioquino said representatives of the Korean Federation of Trade Unions and the Australian Council of Trade Unions attending the ILC openly endorsed the complaints.

Also mentioned in the discussion were the year-long detention of Anakpawis Representative and KMU founding chairman Crispin Beltran and the alleged intimidation of unionized workers at the Chong-Won Fashion Factory at the Cavite Export Processing Zone.

Labog said it was ready to engage in "a showdown of evidence" against DOLE and added that the Arroyo administration now has the burden of proof to clear its name before ILO.

KMU wanted ILO to send a fact-finding team to the Philippines to further study and investigate the current condition of trade union rights here, adding, "We filed the complaint to seek justice for the victims of trade union rights violations."

The number of 64 unionists killed as of October last year, as stated in the original complaint, has risen to 76 as of this month, according to KMU. The group has also documented more abductions of labor leaders, intimidations of factory unions by soldiers, and harassment of labor rights advocates and labor lawyers.