MANILA, Philippines — Lawmakers belonging to the Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives have called for an inquiry into alleged violations of workers’ rights by the government’s anticommunist insurgency task force.
The six-member group on Friday filed House Resolution No. 2225 and House Resolution No. 2226, urging the chamber’s committee on labor and employment and on human rights to investigate “workers’ rights violations perpetrated by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac).”
HR 2225 cited three unions in Laguna province that were being “subjected to profiling, surveillance, harassment and intimidation by suspected state agents,” and identified as well the companies where members of those unions work and their locations in Laguna.
Multinational subsidiaries
All three companies are subsidiaries of multinationals—one, a “food and drink processing conglomerate”; another, “one of the leading global players in health care”; and the third, a “global semiconductor company owned by [a] Chinese [firm].”
According to the resolution, the workers there were being “dissuade[d] … from participating in workers’ rights campaigns,” including the call for “mass testing and free vaccines” as well as “sufficient aid amid the [COVID-19] pandemic.”
The workers were also being forced “to disaffiliate from established industry-wide federations,” such as those associated with Kilusang Mayo Uno, Federation of Free Workers, Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa and other “labor centers,” HR 2225 said.
‘Apparent pattern’
HR 2226 identified nine other unions confronted by “forced disaffiliation [and] state interference with the right to self-organization,” and also the companies, some of them leading names in big business, where those workers face “threats, harassments and intimidation.”
Some of these companies operate in Laguna province and others in Central Luzon, Caraga and other regions.
The resolution said “the end goal … is to bust the unions to render them powerless against whatever the management throws at them.”
The Makabayan bloc said there was an “apparent pattern” in the harassment of union members—such as surveillance by the police and military.
“[S]uspected state agents (sometimes disguised as delivery riders) [would] visit … factories, asking information about [a] union like its officers and activities,” the lawmakers said. “[Or they would] station … themselves outside the homes of union officers/members [apparently] to confirm the residence of their targets.”
They claimed further that “uniformed police/military personnel (who purposely identify themselves as agents of the NTF-Elcac) [would] conduct … house visits to union officers/members asking information about the union, [such as its] officers.”
According to the Makabayan lawmakers, state agents would often explain that they were conducting an awareness campaign warning workers to stay away from “front organization[s]” of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army.
Mastermind
“[W]orkers were being told … to quit their unions or to disaffiliate their unions from their federations after being threatened that they may lose their jobs or face charges in violation of the Anti-Terror[ism] Act of 2020,” the lawmakers said.
They added that this “wanton brandishing of the Anti-Terror[ism] Act against the [workers] showcases what and who the law really is for—to victimize and repress ordinary citizens fighting for their rights and welfare.”
“[W]orkers’ groups point to the [NTF-Elcac] as the mastermind behind continued efforts to label, brand, vilify and harass [them] as state enemies and subversives,” the Makabayan lawmakers said.
‘Wild question’
National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. was reached for comment on the resolutions filed by Makabayan.
“Can’t answer a wild question,” responded Esperon, who also serves as vice chair of the task force.
The said resolutions indicate that the government has broadened the scope of its anti-insurgency campaign to include labor groups as well, apart from the campaign’s earlier focus on activist groups and even journalists and lawyers.
There were also earlier incursions by the state into campuses, notably when police entered the University of the Philippines campus in Cebu City in June last year and arrested seven activists protesting what was then the antiterrorism bill.
Then early this month, a state university in Kalinga province pulled out from its library several publications and documents on the government’s peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, following an inspection by a group of policemen and soldiers.