Philippine labor group touts pro-worker poll candidates

Philippines

Voters told to hold politicians accountable for their promises to protect workers’ rights

A Philippine Church labor group and a bishop have urged people to vote for politicians with a clear platform on how to protect workers from abuses.

The Church People-Workers Solidarity group said every Catholic voter must ask themselves whether politicians protect the labor sector.

“Voters must consider candidates that prioritize and advance the labor agenda … We must look at the track record of each candidate and ask ourselves who among them has shown compassion to laborers,” the group’s chairman, Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlos in Negros Occidental in the Visayas region, told Radyo Veritas.

Bishop Alminaza said politicians should be held accountable for their promises, especially if they had not fulfilled them.

“It is not enough that they [candidates] claim that they are pro-labor only during an election period. They must have shown actual, real support to workers in order to get their vote,” said Bishop Alminaza.

The prelate praised Filipino workers for keeping the Philippine economy amid the Covid-19 pandemic. “Because of your hard work, our national economy develops,” he added.

“Pro-labor politicians must immediately scrap anti-labor laws that perpetuate oppression and exploitation and craft others that promote and protect the rights and dignity of workers”

However, he criticized companies who still practice contractualization — an arrangement where employment is renewed every six months to avoid paying or giving benefits to people in regular employment. Philippine law defines regular employment as work that exceeds six months.

“Contractualization undermines job security, which results in massive unemployment. It also does not honor the dignity of human work because workers do not get the regular benefits they deserve,” Bishop Alminaza said.

“Pro-labor politicians must immediately scrap anti-labor laws that perpetuate oppression and exploitation and craft others that promote and protect the rights and dignity of workers.”

Labor coalition Nagkaisa praised the bishop’s statement.

“Bishop Alminaza is a fighter for social justice. We hope our next set of leaders will be the same. Social justice is the humanization of laws and the equalization of social and economic forces by the state so that justice in the rational and objectively secular conception may at least be appropriated,” the coalition said in a Facebook post.

Latest News