WORKERS RIGHTS

ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

CAMPAIGN GOALS

  1. Wage local and national campaigns for the rights and welfare of Filipinos overseas against fascism, state repression and neglect. Expose attacks on the working class as a key aspect of fascism.

  2. Amplify and cultivate public and political support for the Filipino workers movement and workers’ demands. Support workers’ calls for sovereignty over the Philippine economy.

  3. Create political and diplomatic roadblocks to fascist violence and counterinsurgency against workers, trade unionists, and workers advocates in the Philppines by fostering international solidarity and action from the U.S.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

  1. Become a member of a Malaya Movement chapter: bit.ly/joinmalaya

  2. Join the effort to pass the Philippine Human Rights Act and stop the Philippine Enhanced Resilience Act to cut US funding for human rights violations and war crimes: humanrightsph.org

  3. Donate to support our Campaign efforts tinyurl.com/donate-malaya

  4. Publish statements of solidarity in support of the Filipino workers movement

LEARN ABOUT CAMPAIGNS OUR

CHAPTERS ARE PARTICIPATING IN:

BACKGROUND & CONTEXT

Filipino workers in crisis

For the past 2 years of the Marcos-Duterte administration, increasing prices and dismal wages have been progressively suffocating the Filipino people, and by extension the migrants that ensure their families’ well-being from abroad. The Filipino people are still reeling from last year’s harrowing inflation, from rice to oil prices, while Marcos shamelessly used public funds on lavish trips and Duterte drained public coffers of P125 million within just 11 days. This year, Filipinos are being made to watch politicians attempt to gut the constitution through Charter Change, so they can make the Filipino labor force vulnerable to exploitative labor practices by foreign investors and the Filipino masses to foreign war. 

The crushing conditions that Filipino workers suffer daily in contractual, non-union, and low wage work, on top of inflation brought on by failed economic policy, is pushing Filipino workers to say enough is enough to unfair working conditions while getting little in return to keep our families afloat.

Under Marcos, the Labor Export policy, first instituted by Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1974, continues to be used as a band-aid for the country’s underdevelopment and mass underemployment. More than 1 million Filipinos migrate out of the country each year. Overseas Filipinos, many of whom work in highly exploitative and unregulated industries such as domestic work and seafaring, are forced to serve as the backbone of the Philippine economy. Under Marcos Jr., the number of Filipinos working abroad has increased by 7.6 percent from 2021 to 2022, thereby showing that the Marcos-Duterte regime has no plans to offset the Philippines’ dependency on the labor of Filipino migrants. 

Even abroad, Filipinos do not escape mistreatment from the Philippine upper-class, like the workers who were unjustly and illegally terminated for asking for fair wages from Jollibee in Jersey City, NJ.

It is this reality of ceaseless poverty and deliberate neglect from government and elected leaders that push Filipinos to organize themselves into unions. In turn, the Filipino political class and their partners in profit have been unleashing police, military, and the government bureaucracy to stamp out organizing by workers.

Human Rights Violations are

Often Attacks on Workers

The Philippines is one of the deadliest countries for workers and trade unionists. The country’s human rights violations against workers’ right to organize lists extrajudicial killings, as in the case of the Bloody Sunday massacre in 2021 and Jude Fernandez in September 2023; unjust arrests and detention, like the police raid that arrested 57 in Bacolod; red-tagging, as Vice President Sara Duterte had done to the Alliance for Concerned Teachers; and police itself threatening workers into withdrawing their union membership, as was the case for Nexperia workers in 2022. In fact, human rights violations in the Philippines are often attacks on struggling workers and their attempts to organize.

All of this is on top of unbearable working conditions in the Philippines, where workers are forced to organize because of issues like contractualization and contempt by employers for workplace safety standards, which caused the chemical fire that took 97 Kentex Manufacturing workers’ lives.

Neoliberal schemes and

counterinsurgency go hand in hand

The Philippine state’s conduct of the economy dictates workers’ need to organize, and by extension informs the state’s fascist reaction to thwart workers’ organizing. This is important to keep in mind, one reason being Bongbong Marcos’ push to further open the Philippine economy up to foreign investors through the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), both of which aim to ease regulations on business, protections for workers and the environment, and protections for small producers. These “free trade” schemes will directly result in the necessity to organize for workers’ rights and protection, in turn prompting the government to increase militarization and counterinsurgency to commit more human rights crimes, in order to make sure workers’ freedom of assembly and freedom to organize don’t get in the way of profit.

Alarmingly, Marcos Jr. and company’s attempts to change the 1987 Constitution have been more aggressive than past presidents’, including through a “people’s initiative” riddled with reports of bribery at the beginning of 2023.  Marcos Jr. has been explicit about his intent to open the Philippines up to more foreign investment and control of Philippine territory, which in turn increases prices, further stagnates wages, and increases state violence to protect foreign assets and quell protests against exploitative labor practices, land grabbing, and environmental destruction.

This move towards opening the Philippines more and more to foreign extraction and control, particularly by the United States, is due to the United States’ looming war against China for domination over the Asia-Pacific market. The Filipino labor force is not only being forced to fight against unlivable wages and unscrupulous labor practices, it is also being plunged into open conflict between rival superpowers.

Solidarity with workers in the US

In 2016, call center workers in the Philippines refused to cross a picket line started by Verizon workers in the U.S. When one of those Philippine call center worker organizers, Anne Krueger, was unjustly arrested in 2019, the U.S. union that began the strike by Verizon workers, the Communications Workers of America, helped to secure Anne’s freedom through advocacy and international pressure.

Solidarity between Philippine workers and U.S. workers has always played an important role, from past to present. One clear example is when Filipino-American Seattle cannery workers and union leaders Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo braved the Marcos Sr. dictatorship and extended support to Filipino workers who were  facing martial law. 

Now, workers’ strikes and unionizing are seeing a revival in the U.S. As the Malaya Movement USA aids Filipino workers facing fascist attacks by the state, we should extend our solidarity with workers right here in the U.S. who are organizing for the same basic rights (which are also endangered by the likes of APEC and IPEF). We should aid their struggle at the same time extend theirs and our solidarity to the Philippines. In doing so, we strengthen international solidarity between workers, which is an indispensable and powerful tool to thwart war and fascism by the state.