Labor groups oppose Brion’s appointment to Supreme Court
By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:46:00 03/19/2008
Filed Under: Judiciary (system of justice), Labor
MANILA, Philippiens -- Militant labor groups are opposing the appointment of Arturo Brion to the Supreme Court, saying the former labor secretary had a dismal record of upholding workers’ rights.
On Wednesday, the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU, May First Movement) described Brion as Malacañang’s “yes-man” and said they were worried about the fate of labor-related suits pending before the high court.
“We fear that Associate Justice Brion will uphold the interest of big-time capitalists -- particularly foreign investors and businessmen charged with labor violations or who are involved in labor disputes,” KMU spokesman Prestoline Suyat said.
The Quezon City-based Center for Trade Union and Human Rights, called Brion’s appointment “disturbing” and a “deep insult” to the Supreme Court’s pro-human rights stand.
“CTUHR cannot help but believe that his appointment is a calculated move of the Arroyo government to secure a foothold in the Supreme Court to counter or temper what appears as brewing activism in that august body,” the group’s executive director, Daisy Arago, told reporters.
Suyat and Arago recalled that when KMU lodged a complaint with the International Labor Organization in September 2006 against the spate of extrajudicial killings of trade unionists in the Philippines, Brion tried to dissuade the ILO from investigating the killings. He later denounced the KMU complaint as “premature and sinister” and suggested that some labor groups might be communist fronts.
The labor leaders cited strike dispersals and cases of union harassment at Nestlé in Cabuyao, Laguna, and Nissan Motors, Toyota Motors, Oxford Garments, Big E, Sulpicio Lines and Hanjin. Hundreds of labor cases remained unsolved, they claimed.
Malacañang, however, defended Brion’s appointment. During his regular press briefing on Wednesday, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said Brion’s appointment had nothing to do with the anticipated vote next week on the petition of former economic planning minister Romulo Neri on the parameters of “executive privilege.”
Invoking President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s executive privilege, Neri earlier refused to testify, at the Senate, about his conversations with the President on the allegedly overpriced National Broadband Network deal with China’s ZTE Corp. He said he had nothing more to say about the deal after his first appearance at the Senate and became the subject of a Senate warrant of arrest when he skipped a subsequent hearing.
The arrest warrant prompted him to go to the Supreme Court to have it quashed and to clarify the parameters of executive privilege, the power of the President to withhold information that could jeopardize national security and international diplomacy.
|
