The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) extends its solidarity with the faculty and employees of the Centro Escolar University (CEU) who want to go on strike to fight for better wages and benefits. We condemn Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma’s injunction order against the CEU faculty and employees’ strike, which is a violation of their right.

Negotiations between the CEU administration and the faculty and employees, led by the CEU Faculty and Allied Workers Union (FAWU), for a collective bargaining agreement for 2025-2030 has been in deadlock since September 25. In a strike vote on December 16, faculty and workers from CEU’s Manila, Makati and Malolos campuses voted “yes” to holding a strike.

The CEU administration has refused to bargain in earnest with the CEU FAWU. In response to CEU FAWU’s demand of P2,500 salary increase, health card, retirement benefits, signing bonus, increased calamity assistance and emergency financial assistance, the CEU administration offered a mere P650 across the board wage hike in a conciliation meeting presided over by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on January 12.

The faculty and workers of CEU were about to hold a strike today, January 13, but Laguesma issued an assumption of jurisdiction order on the labor dispute in the private university. This means that faculty and employees should return to work lest they face retrenchment, criminal charges, the repressive force of the police and the military, or all of these.

How can workers effectively fight for their labor rights if the strike, one of their most potent weapons for advancing their rights, is always thwarted by the government? Yet in history and based on experience, it is extremely rare for employers to raise workers’ wages and advance labor rights on their own; workers have to fight for these.

Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Memorandum No. 3 Series of 2012 clearly stipulates that 70% tuition fee increases must go to increasing the salaries, wages, and benefits of faculty and staff. This has been repeatedly invoked by private universities to justify the non-stop and steep increases in tuition fees that they implement. Where are these funds when faculty and employees demand an increase in wages and benefits?

We reiterate our demand for the junking of the Labor Secretary’s power to assume jurisdiction over labor disputes. It is an overly broad power that curtails workers’ rights to hold a strike and therefore weakens their right to collectively bargain.

We call on the CEU administration to bargain in earnest with CEU FAWU and uphold the labor rights of their faculty and employees. Faculty and staff’s working conditions are students’ learning conditions, and CEU has a responsibility to advance the labor rights of its faculty and staff, for its students and for improving college education in general.