The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights welcomes the Ferdinand Marcos Jr administration’s financial and economic assistance program for labor rights defenders, but emphasizes that this is the bare minimum in upholding workers’ labor and human rights.

Yesterday, Labor Day, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) launched the Labor, Intervention, Financial, and Economic (LIFE) Assistance Program for labor rights defenders who face harassment, threats or violence because of their rights work.

The LIFE Assistance Program cites as its basis the recommendations of the International Labour Organization (ILO) High-Level Tripartite Mission in 2023 as well as Executive Order No. 23, Series of 2023 on “Reinforcing and Protecting the Freedom of Association and Right to Organize of Workers.”

The LIFE assistance package includes referrals to government agencies or offices for interventions and programs for specific needs, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) skills training, scholarships, government internship programs, and livelihood assistance.

While the LIFE Assistance Program is a step in the right direction, there is still much that the government needs to do to uphold workers’ labor and human rights. Among these are:

(1) Immediately release the 23 political prisoners from the labor movement. These labor activists are victims of trumped-up charges that were filed by the Rodrigo Duterte administration and of evidence planted by state agents.

(2) Surface the two labor organizers who were abducted and disappeared during the Marcos Jr administration – Loi Magbanua (abducted May 2022, Metro Manila) and William Lariosa (April 2024, Bukidnon).

(3) Investigate the extra-judicial killing of 72 labor activists under the Duterte and Marcos Jr administrations, and hold the perpetrators accountable.

(4) Abolish the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) that was responsible for red-tagging labor activists, calling for their repression, and justifying such repression. Hold the agency’s top officials accountable for their crimes.

(5) Speed up the handling of cases of illegal termination filed by workers who were retrenched because of union activities. Employers have often retrenched workers for exercising their freedom of association and have availed of the slow processing of illegal termination cases.

These are the measures that matter in protecting workers’ labor and human rights, but the Marcos Jr administration’s actions on these point to a contrary trend. Political prisoners’ cases are dragging on in the courts, and cases pertaining to disappeared and murdered labor activists have been junked. Marcos Jr himself has stood by the NTF-ELCAC and courts continue to be slow-moving in relation to illegal termination cases.

These measures are on top of the ILO-HLTM’s recommendation to create a presidential body that will drive and coordinate efforts to protect workers’ freedom of association and ensure the accountability of violators.