The presidential inter-agency committee created under Executive Order (EO) No. 23, will provide concrete actions in addressing trade unionist killings, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) assured on Wednesday.
Labor Secretary Bienvenido E. Laguesma made the assurance after labor groups criticized the membership of the committee, which only includes government agencies.
With the said agencies to be directly led by the Office of the President, he said there would be prompt response to the concerns raised by labor groups on the Freedom of Association (FOA) violations.
“My appeal and call to them [labor groups] is to let the interagency committee do its job first,” Laguesma said in a media forum in Manila on Wednesday.
Under EO 23, the committee will be chaired by the Executive Secretary and vice chaired by DOLE.
Its members include the Department of Justice, Department of the Interior and Local Government, Department of National Defense, Department of Trade and Industry, National Security Council and the Philippine National Police.
Laguesma explained one of the reasons why workers were excluded from the committee is because they were the ones who raised the government’s supposed slow response in resolving the cases of trade unionists killings before the International Labor Organization High Level Tripartite Mission (ILO-HLTM).
In its submitted report to the ILO-HLTM, the All Philippine Trade Unions (APTU) reported at least 68 incidents of trade unionists killings.
“How can we allow the complainants to be also the ones judging the actions [of the government on trade unionist killings]. Even the employers are also not part [of the committee],” Laguesma said.
Federation of Free Workers (FFW) president Sonny Matula, however, insisted that there should be tripartism in the committee to prevent it from ending up just like the Inter-Agency Committee on Extra-Legal Killings, Enforce Disappearances, Torture, and Other Grave Violations of the Right to Life Liberty and Security of Persons (IAC).
Labor groups noted that despite the existence of the IAC since 2012, it failed to address their reported trade unionist killings.
“Workers’ groups suggest that as early as now, workers shall be involved [with the committee],” Matula said.
For his part, Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa Secretary General Josua Mata also questioned how the committee resolved the said cases, when some of its members are faced with allegations of labor rights violations.
“Ensuring that workers can truly exercise their constitutionally mandated freedom of association is much too important to leave in the hands of this so-called presidential committee, especially because those in it are the very institutions that are spearheading the government’s campaign to red-tag unions,” Mata said.