PH among 10 most dangerous work sites

The Philippines is among top 10 dangerous place for workers in 2020 based on the 2020 Global Rights Index issued by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) said Saturday.

Other countries in the top 10 are Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Honduras, India, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Zimbabwe.

“The ALU-TUCP) are fully in accord with the findings of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and stand by their listing of the Philippines as one of the top 10 most dangerous countries in the world for workers,” the country’s biggest labor group said in a statement.

“We see the handwriting clearly on the wall: workers rights and workers are and will be victims in the current political environment,” the labor group’s spokesman Alan Tanjusay said.

This, Tanjusay said, was considering the current state of labor relations policy during the quarantine allowing wage reductions and suspending labor rights inspections, the anti-labor and the anti-consumer program of the economic managers to raise anew excise taxes and opposing security of tenure, and the “dangerous political slide towards authoritarianism” evidenced by passage of the Anti-Terror Bill.

“There remains unresolved assassinations, allegedly labor-related disappearances, various repressions, red-tagging and wanton attacks on workers and workers’ fundamental rights that makes the current environment dangerous and difficult for workers,” the group said.

The ALU-TUCP also foresee the conditions to get even worse in the days ahead because of the current full operationalization of police and military offices in ecozones to combat what they describe as “radical trade unions”, the inevitable enactment and enforcement of anti-terror bill and the current aggressive push by business owners in cahoots with the economic managers for increased labor flexibilization, wage reduction and the lowering of labor standards -- using the COVID19.

Tanjusay said it is the government that now makes the country more dangerous and more difficult place for workers to live and to work and as they are promoting unproductive and very dangerous class warfare.

“We urge our national government to listen to us and to remember the lessons to history. We plead to our national leadership to step back from the brink of this totalitarian temptation and accept the path of building back better by upholding our individual civil and political liberties, respecting our collective economic rights, and by putting our workers interests first. This is the path to saving jobs and saving lives.” he said.

The ITUC Global Rights Index depicts the world’s worst countries for workers based on the degree of respect for workers’ rights by rating 139 countries on a scale from 1 to 5. Workers’ rights are absent in countries with the rating 5 and violations occur on an irregular basis in countries with the rating 1. - by Vito Barcelo

TUCP blames World Bank for 23,000 retrenchments

WE are daring to criticize the revered and mighty World Bank again.

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines-Nagkaisa (TUCP-Nagkaisa) has rebuked the World Bank (WB) during its shareholder consultation last Thursday “for excluding core labor standards in its project and policy loans intended for so-called development programs in the country amid the static unemployment and underemployment statistics.”

TUCP estimates that because of “the absence of these standards, around 23,000 workers are already being affected in two ongoing country projects.”

“The bank continues to ignore very important core labor safeguards and standards on wages, health and safe working conditions, terms of employment of workers employed in Bank- financed projects. The continued absence of these core labor standards means that the World Bank will not stand in the way of those denying Filipino workers their right to organize and unionize in infrastructure projects sponsored by the Bank. It means that the Bank will not stand in the way of those retrenching workers in Bank–financed privatizations of state enterprises. We insist that these benchmarks be integrated as soon as possible, otherwise the Bank will be a party to the race-to-the-bottom in terms of the already massive de facto casualization and contractualization of workers,” said Alan Tanjusay, TUCP-Nagkaisa spokesperson.

The bank had organized a round of consultation with various labor unions representatives, environmental advocates, sectoral leaders of peasants, indigenous peoples, women, fisherfolk and youth in the Astoria Plaza in Pasig City last Thursday in the course of its global review and update of its environmental and social policies.

Gerard Seno, executive director of the Associated Labor Unions-TUCP, said the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) have started asserting since 1997 for the incorporation of the core labor standards in the safeguard policies of the Bank.

Commendably the World Bank has taken a position against the use of child-labor and non-discrimination in the work force due to sex, religion and political beliefs but there are still huge and gaping holes in their current draft of the “Environmental and Social Standard: Labor and Working Conditions,” TUCP said.

The bank’s board is scheduled to consider a draft in 2015 that is supposed to be inputted with ideas gathered from the consultations.

“The draft labor standard prepared by the Bank does not have the standard requirement that has existed at the bank’s private sector lending arm the International Finance Corporation (IFC) since 2006 and those that have been adopted in recent years by many regional development banks,” Seno said.

TUCP-Nagkaisa Executive Director Luis Corral pointed out that there are more than 23,000 workers in the 119 electric cooperatives whose wages, working conditions and even security of tenure could be affected by World Bank grants and loans for these electric cooperatives.

Coral said, “We are concerned that the workers in these electric cooperatives are not being consulted through their existing unions. The fear of retrenchment or displacement is very real. We remind the Bank that because of the bank-sponsored privatization of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) thousands of workers were retrenched. The Bank must proceed with more responsibility and social consciousness.”

“The World Bank has to be reminded that it is the ordinary taxpayers’ money from all the member governments that finances these Bank projects. These are taxes paid by ordinary workers. We also remind the Bank that its aim is to eradicate poverty. It will not do so if even in its own projects, it will not stand for standards that will advance decent work,” Corral added.

We wholeheartedly endorse TUCP’s proposals to the World Bank. - Manila Times

No problem with workers’ rights in PH, says Baldoz

Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz: No problem. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz has downplayed the assessment of an international workers’ rights organization that the Philippines is among the worst countries in the world for workers.

“It does not necessarily concern the workers’ rights since we don’t have problems with workers’ rights. We can say the industry advocacy for workers in the country is very good,” said Baldoz, referring to the 2014 Global Rights Index of the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

ITUC ranked 139 countries based on internationally recognized indicators to assess where workers’ rights, such as democratic rights, decent wages, safer working conditions and secure jobs, are best protected, in law and in practice.
Countries were ranked from 1 (best) to 5 (worst) based on 97 indicators related to workers’ rights. The evaluation was conducted from April 2013 to March 2014.

The Philippines obtained a rating of 5, which meant that legislation protecting workers’ rights were in place but workers effectively had no access to such rights, thus exposing them to autocratic regimes and unfair labor practices.
“In terms of quality of work in the country, I can say we are doing OK. The same goes with what they are saying about labor rights,” Baldoz said.

But she said that if there was one aspect of the ITUC findings that was accurate, it would be the problem of the extrajudicial killings of workers.

According to Baldoz, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima has committed to fast-track the investigation and hearing of extrajudicial killings involving workers by creating special prosecutor teams.

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), meanwhile, said the ITUC findings only confirmed what labor groups in the country had been saying all along.

“The TUCP confirms the findings of the ITUC that the Philippines is indeed one of the worst places to work in,” said TUCP president Democrito Mendoza in a statement.

The TUCP underscored the high unemployment in the country, adding that it expected this to increase because there was no new infrastructure to attract large and jobs-creating investments. Inquirer

Philippines among worst countries for workers

THE PHILIPPINES has been tagged as one of the worst countries for workers, according to a report from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

The country, based on ITUC’s 2014 Global Rights Index, earned a “5” rating, which meant “no guarantee of rights”.

“Countries with the rating of 5 are the worst countries in the world to work in. While the legislation may spell out certain rights, workers have effectively no access to these rights and are therefore exposed to autocratic regimes and unfair labor practices,” the ITUC said.

The organization’s other ratings include a 5+ for “no guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of the rule of law”, 4 for “systematic violation of rights”, 3 for “regular violation of rights”, 2 for “repeated violation of rights” and 1 for “irregular violation of rights.

“Based on reports from affiliates, workers in at least 53 countries have either been dismissed or suspended from their jobs for attempting to negotiate better working conditions,” the ITUC said.

“In the vast majority of these cases, the national legislation offered either no protection or did not provided dissuasive sanctions in order to hold abusive employers accountable,” it added.

Asked for comment, Alan A. Tanjusay, spokesman of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, said prevailing working conditions in the country “confirm the report”.

He cited, among other things, contractual workers receiving less than the mandated minimum wage, lack of security of tenure and health insurance, the transfer of social services to the private sector from the government, vulnerability to price fluctuations of commodities and high unemployment.

“In fact, we anticipate unemployment will rise to 5 million due to the fact that there are no new infrastructures to attract large and job-creating investments,” Mr. Tanjusay said.

The country’s unemployment rate stood at 7.5% as of January this year.

Edgardo G. Lacson, president of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines, said for his part: “Ugliness, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder”.

“The opinion of one group may not truly represent the sentiment of the entire universe of 41 million workers in the country,” Mr. Lacson said in a text message.

“Workers’ condition in various workplaces is situational, and the claim by the group in question must be supported by empirical data,” he added.

Labor Secretary Rosalinda D. Baldoz declined to comment, saying she has yet to read a copy of the report.

The ITUC Global Rights Index covered violations in 139 countries from April 2013 to March 2014.

ITUC is a confederation of national trade union centers with 325 affiliated organizations in 161 countries and territories. It has a membership of over 176 million. - BusinessWorld