As it launches the initial findings and recommendations of its 2025 report today, a network devoted to the rights of Filipino workers detailed the Ferdinand Marcos Jr government’s promises of taking action and actual inaction and called on the government to address the major rights issues facing workers.

At a press conference at the Smallville 21 Hotel in Iloilo City today, Workers Rights Watch (WRW), composed of labor NGO Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR), labor center Federation of Free Workers (FFW), women’s labor group Kilusan ng Manggagawang Kababaihan (KMK), among others, launched the “2025 State of Freedom of Association in the Philippines Report.”

The report discusses the Marcos Jr government’s inaction on the 105 cases of extrajudicial killings of workers since 2016; the continuing harassments, intimidation, illegal arrests and killings among labor activists that occured at least once a week in 2025; and the lack of follow-through to the president’s issuance of Executive Order 97, which sought to protect workers’ freedom of association, in September last year.

“Marcos Jr’s lackeys and allies like to depict him as a force for democracy, especially in comparison to the Dutertes who are a force for dictatorship. The truth is that President Marcos Jr had only paid lip service to an important component of democracy – workers’ labor and human rights. Without government protection for their rights, workers’ political participation cannot be meaningful,” said Kamz Deligente, CTUHR executive director.

CTUHR said that apart from surrendering former President Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC), Marcos Jr has not done anything substantial for workers’ rights, even maintaining the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) which called for and justified various rights violations.

“A relative decline in the worst rights violation does not mean an end to impunity. For impunity to end, and for a statement to be made against future rights violations, those responsible for previous rights violations should face prosecution,” Deligente added.

CTUHR said that 17 labor activists continue to be imprisoned as political prisoners, with Pauline Joy Banjawan, arrested in April 2025, as the latest addition. It also cited Jude Fernandez (September 2023) and Warlita Jimenez (December 2025) as the latest additions to labor activists who were victims of extrajudicial killings. Labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno’s (KMU) Cordillera spokesperson Mike Cabangon, meanwhile, still faces trumped-up terrorism financing charges.

“Union density in the country remains low, and one of the reasons is that government inaction has made workers think that union-building is such a high-risk endeavor that is treated almost like a crime by employers and the government. Forming and joining unions is a right, and one way of changing this negative perception is for the government to prosecute rights violations,” Deligente added.