Harassment Threatens Unions; Foreign Companies Risk Complicity in Abuses
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- The Philippine government has accused union leaders and members of being combatants or supporters of communist insurgency, putting them at great risk of harassment and violence.
- This sinister and at times deadly practice, known as “red-tagging,” has become a serious threat to labor rights in the Philippines.
- President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. should direct officials to end this abusive practice and ensure that authorities uphold the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively.
(Manila, September 26, 2024) – The government of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines has harassed and threatened union leaders and their members by accusing them of being combatants or supporters of the communist insurgency, Human Rights Watch said today. This practice, known as “red-tagging,” has led labor activists to withdraw from unions and individual unions to end their affiliations with labor federations critical of the government.
Human Rights Watch research in the Southern Tagalog region, south of Manila, where many foreign companies operate in “special economic zones,” found that local officials and members of the police or military repeatedly visit the homes of union leaders and officers, and threaten action against them for allegedly being members or sympathizers of the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. When those targeted were not at home, the officials would pressure their family members to convince them not to support the NPA. Because of many past killings of labor activists who had been red-tagged, those targeted and their relatives said the harassment made them fear for their lives.
“The Philippine government’s sinister and at times deadly practice of ‘red-tagging’ has become a serious threat to labor rights in the country,” said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. should direct officials to end this abusive practice and ensure that government authorities uphold the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed 14 union leaders and workers in the Southern Tagalog region, as well as labor rights advocates, and documented more than a dozen recent cases of harassment or threats by government officials or security forces.
Successive Philippine governments have red-tagged leftist activists, journalists, and human rights defenders, as well as labor activists. Several union leaders and members described heightened threats since 2022 against leaders of at least seven unions during collective bargaining.
“It’s clear to us that the Philippine government is using red-tagging to prevent workers from organizing and unionizing,” said Jerome Adonis, the secretary-general of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement, commonly known as KMU), the largest left-wing national labor federation. Over the years, many KMU leaders and activists have been targets of red-tagging, and the KMU reports that 72 union leaders and members have been killed since 2016. Red-tagging has led to at least two unions ending their affiliation with the KMU and to a reduction in the number of unionized workers across the Philippines in recent years, said Kamz Deligente, deputy director of the Manila-based Center for Trade Union and Human Rights.
Harassment and threats, and at times violence, over months and years take a toll on union leaders, activists, and their families, Human Rights Watch said. On March 7, 2019, in an incident known as “Bloody Sunday,” police and the military raided union offices in three provinces and killed nine people. Most of those killed had either been red-tagged or belonged to groups that had been red-tagged.
A union leader affiliated with the KMU said that because of red-tagging, she felt her life was in danger, and after her factory laid her off, she went into hiding. “I’m not safe wherever I go,” she said. “I’m fearful for my life and that of my family.”
In 2018, then-President Rodrigo Duterte created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, the agency that has been at the forefront of red-tagging. The anti-communist task force provides funds for development projects to barangays (villages and urban neighborhoods) with an alleged NPA presence. Barangay officials are then required to ensure that their communities are free from communist influence, and local officials and residents are called upon to report any NPA presence or activity to the task force, a practice that provides incentives for red-tagging.
The task force has also encouraged red-tagging against student and youth activists, women’s groups, environmentalists and Indigenous peoples, religious groups, journalists, teachers, and even members of the judiciary. The Marcos government should promptly disband the task force, Human Rights Watch said.
In early 2023, a high-level International Labour Organization (ILO) mission to the Philippines determined that the Philippine government had done “very little” to stop or minimize violations of labor rights, including red-tagging and the killing of union leaders and members. The mission denounced the “mindset” of linking unionism to the communist insurgency.
In April 2023, President Marcos issued Executive Order 23 “to strengthen the coordination and facilitate the resolution of labor cases in the country.” Still, there have been at least four killings of union activists since the ILO mission.
Trade partners of the Philippines should advocate protecting labor rights in the Philippines, Human Rights Watch said. The European Union in particular should press the Philippine government on red-tagging in the renewed negotiations for a free trade agreement, and urge the government to uphold its human and labor rights obligations as necessary to continue benefiting from trade preferences under the Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus mechanism.
The new EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) introduces legal obligations on large EU-based and foreign companies selling products and services in the EU market to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence, including in their global supply chains down to the raw material level. This would cover factories in the Philippines that are a part of their supply chains. Global brands and retailers under the scope of the CSDDD have a legal obligation to conduct due diligence in the Philippines to identify, prevent, mitigate, and remediate adverse human rights, and environmental impact such as the risk of red-tagging that impedes workers’ ability to form and join unions and collectively bargain.
Beyond the CSDDD’s scope, all companies have responsibilities to respect human rights and are encouraged to conduct human rights due diligence as per the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. The Philippines is party to at least 39 ILO conventions promoting the right to organize and to collectively bargaining.
Companies doing business or whose supply chain partners are in the Philippines should consider the risks and adverse impacts of red-tagging on their employees as part of their human rights due diligence process. Companies should ensure protection of workers on site against harassment and should call on the authorities to end the practice, both directly and in cooperation with others, to avoid being complicit in these abuses.
In addition to disbanding the task force, President Marcos should send a clear message to the police, military, and local government officials that red-tagging will no longer be tolerated, including with respect to union leaders and members, Human Rights Watch said. Authorities should thoroughly investigate and prosecute all incidents. The ILO should monitor the situation and report publicly on Philippine government compliance with international human rights and labor rights standards.
“Red-tagging violates workers’ rights in often debilitating and brutal ways,” Lau said. “Companies sourcing from the Philippines should specifically consider fully the risks of red-tagging when they conduct human rights due diligence, call on authorities to end the abusive practice, and take all appropriate measures to avoid complicity in abuses.”
For more Human Rights Watch reporting on the Philippines, please visit:
https://www.hrw.org/asia/philippines
For more information, please contact:
In Manila, Carlos Conde (English, Tagalog, Visayan): +1-646-858-5908 (mobile); or condec@hrw.org. Twitter: @carloshconde
In Calgary, Bryony Lau (English, French): +1-646-984-5500 (mobile); or laub@hrw.org.
In Bangkok, John Sifton (English): +1-646-479-2499 (mobile); or siftonj@hrw.org.
For more details and accounts from victims and witnesses, please see below.
Harassment, Red-Tagging of Union Leaders, Members
Noel Baron
Noel Baron, 45, is the union president at Ebara Pumps Philippines Inc., a company that makes steel pumps mainly for export. The company operates out of Laguna province, inside an industrial zone along with other multinational companies. The union was formed three decades ago, Baron said, and now has 120 members out of its 280 or so employees.
He had just returned from work on a Monday afternoon in April 2023 when a motorcycle without license plates parked not far from his home in Cabuyao, a town in Laguna province. It carried two masked men wearing civilian clothes. Noting the prevalence in the Philippines of so-called “riding-in-tandem” killers, he said, his “heart skipped a beat” when he saw them. “I was directly facing them.”
The men identified themselves as “Brian” and “Mendoza” from the anti-communist task force. They told Baron they were visiting him to reiterate a message that the task force, as well as the police and the military, had told him and his fellow union leaders from the Ebara Employees Union that they should not join union activities organized by the leftist KMU labor group. “They said I’m on a watchlist for supposed involvement with the NPA,” Baron said. “They said I ought to clear my name.”
Baron said that was the ninth such visit he had received since 2022. Each time there were different people. The first time three people in police and army uniforms came to his house. Other times they wore civilian clothes. During each of the earlier visits, local barangay officials or village watchmen accompanied the visitors. “They want our union to disaffiliate from KMU because, according to them, the KMU is under the regional committee of the NPA,” Baron said.
Baron said that ever since the Ebara union became active in promoting workers’ rights, government agents have repeatedly harassed its members to end their affiliation with the KMU. “They would accuse us of using union activities to support the NPA,” he said. “If we don’t abandon the KMU, they said, they would find evidence to show our links to the NPA.”
Baron said other union officials were also harassed. “My fellow officials are also visited in their homes,” he said. “Government agents would use former union officers against us, for example by launching a signature campaign against me. As a result, several of us have left the unions so that only two of us are left.”
In August 2023, Baron and several other union leaders allied with the KMU filed a case before the Philippine Commission on Human Rights seeking, among other actions, to defund and disband the task force. The case remains pending.
Government officials also harassed the families of labor activists. “They told my wife and my children to convince me to abandon the union,” Baron said. It became so bad, he said, that he often will not go home for weeks on end, one time spending two months away from his family out of fear for their safety. “When I go home, I would change my routines and routes,” he said. “Our lives have been upended by the harassment.… The fear and anxiety never went away.”
Mario Fernandez
Mario Fernandez is president of Technol Eight Philippines Workers’ Union at a Japanese company located in the Laguna Technopark in the city of Biñan, Laguna. The union has 168 members out of the company’s 305 employees.
Fernandez said that problems with the authorities started when the union began collective bargaining with the company in February 2022 and negotiations got bogged down. In March, soldiers and police started appearing in communities where identified union leaders, such as Fernandez, lived. They would visit these communities in uniform and armed.
On March 26 that year, two men in civilian clothes sought out Fernandez and another union official in a Laguna village and asked questions about their union activities. Later that evening, uniformed and armed men arrived at Fernandez’s house in Cavite province, adjacent to Laguna, and asked his brother about Fernandez’s whereabouts. “They told him to tell me to disaffiliate from the KMU,” Fernandez said. During another visit, in June, uniformed and armed men visited his home again. “My children told me not to go home for a while,” Fernandez said.
Fernandez said men from the task force also went to the homes of his colleagues in the union. “Their spiel was they wanted to talk to me and warned me not to join rallies for then presidential candidate Leni Robredo,” he said. “[I]t’s clear that they were trying to intimidate me because of my affiliation with KMU.”
Maria A.
Maria A. (a pseudonym), an organizer for the Nexperia Philippines union, described the harassment she and a colleague, Allan Bagas, experienced because of their union work at Pamantik, a labor organization in the Southern Tagalog region.
She said that a video was circulated on Facebook in 2022 showing photos of her and Bagas that identified them as NPA recruiters. She said that the task force had previously contacted and visited Bagas.
Bagas died by suicide in September 2022. “Do we have proof that Allan died by suicide because of the harassment,” she said. “No. But he could no longer take the harassment.”
She has been repeatedly red-tagged since the video appeared. In October 2023, Nexperia dismissed Maria A., who had worked there for 25 years, including 24 as a union shop steward, along with others. Officially, she was fired on grounds of poor performance.
She said she continued to feel unsafe. “I am not safe wherever I go,” she said. “I’m fearful for my life and that of my family’s.” Since her dismissal, she said, she has gone into hiding. She discussed in chat messages the toll the harassment has had on her. “The effect on my mental health has been severe,” she said. “I often wake up in the middle of the night because of a recurring nightmare of men destroying our gate, trying to get in. I hardly get decent sleep these days.”
Oliver Muya
Oliver Muya, the Nexperia union’s vice president, said he has been the target of red-tagging and harassment. He said that armed police and soldiers have repeatedly come to his home looking for him. In one instance, on the morning of April 30, 2021, six uniformed armed police and soldiers arrived at his house in Cabuyao, Laguna, accompanied by village watchmen. The men “were armed and in camouflage uniforms so [my family and I] were scared,” Muya said. “They told us they were ‘raising awareness’ about the KMU being a front for the NPA.”
In a second incident, on December 16, 2022, men in civilian clothes visited Muya’s home again. Only his wife and two young daughters were there. “They told her they were just confirming certain information that they would then pass on to the national, whatever that meant,” Muya said. “Then they gave her a number and insisted that I call them, otherwise my name will be on the watchlist.” He said he did not call.
Muya said he believed that the authorities targeted the wives and children of union leaders for harassment “because they knew the emotional toll it could create.” He said that “My children were told to tell me not to join the unions and its activities. My mother was traumatized as well.”
Muya said that in a subsequent dialogue in early 2023 between the union, the Department of Labor and Employment, and the task force, government officials told union officers to end their affiliation with the KMU. They also told him that he “had to leave” because his name was implicated in an armed encounter between NPA fighters and the military in nearby Quezon province. Muya said he filed a complaint with the Commission on Human Rights, which remains pending.
Muya said that the task force, the police, the military, and barangay officials were influencing union elections and aiming to eliminate the unions. “They’re trying to isolate the KMU so it makes it easier for them to bust the union,” he said. He said there was consistent cooperation from barangay officials with the military, the police, and the task force. “There’s always people from the barangay with them every time they visit,” he said. He said that between late 2021 and October 2023, local officials had repeatedly “invited” more than 100 union officers and members to the offices of the barangay.
Debie Faigmani
Debie Faigmani, president of the Wyeth Philippines Progressive Workers Union, estimated that men in civilian clothes and uniformed police and soldiers had visited at least 14 officers and members of the union. The previous president, Gabriel delos Reyes, had been the subject of intimidation and red-tagging since 2021. In one instance, “six people came and talked to him,” Faigmani said. “He just listened but the visit obviously created fear for [Gabriel].” The message during these visits were, according to Faigmani, “end the affiliation with the KMU”.
Faigmani said the harassment had had a tremendous impact on the union and its members. “They lost morale and their spirits were dampened by these house-to-house red-tagging [incidents],” he said. “People were just scared and many became resigned to the inevitable.”
Frederick Cula and Ricardo Bagasko
Frederick Cula, 41, a shop steward with the Unyon ng mga Panadero sa Gardenia Philippines (Gardenia Philippines Bakers’ Union), described the harassment of the union. He said that starting in June 2022, three uniformed soldiers – two men and a woman – attended a meeting at the company compound with around 35 employees, most of them union members. There the soldiers tried to discredit activist unions, accusing them of working with the NPA. The authorities also accused the union officers, including Rhoel Alconera, the vice chairperson, who has himself been red-tagged and faced terrorism charges, of being recruiters for the rebel group.
Ricardo Bagasko, 48, another Gardenia union leader, said he was directed to attend a similar meeting at the factory on May 24, 2023. One of the military personnel attending the meeting was wearing a colonel’s uniform, he said. Two men with them said they were former NPA fighters.
“They accused Rhoel of being an NPA combatant who is now allegedly in the mountains,” Bagasko said, “They were just trying to intimidate us because we’ve been demanding better wages.” He said that Gardenia workers had earlier held a rally outside of the Laguna economic zone demanding higher wages. “But we’re not afraid because I know what we’re fighting for is just.”
