We in the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR), a member of the Workers Rights Watch Network, welcome the release of the 2026 Global Rights Index (GRI). The GRI is a well-respected report on the state of workers’ rights globally, released by the International Trade Union Confederation or ITUC, the broadest global labor confederation.

We appreciate the ITUC GRI for keeping track of the state of labor rights around the world. It shines a spotlight on the ten worst countries for labor rights and is therefore a call to action for urgent global trade union solidarity. We extend our solidarity with the workers of the 10 countries which are seen as being the worst for workers’ rights in the previous year.

We recognize the fact that the Philippines, for the first time after many years, has been dislodged from the list of the Ten Worst Countries for Workers. We see this as not due to improvements in the state of labor rights in the country, but the worsening state of those rights in other countries. The Philippines did not perform better; other countries only performed worse.

The Workers’ Rights Watch Report for 2025 underscores the continuing dire conditions for Filipino workers:
– Out of the 109 extrajudicial killings of workers, unionists and labor activists since 2016, not a single criminal has been held accountable. We recall the March 7, 2021 Bloody Sunday massacre in Southern Tagalog, under a joint police-military operation, that killed veteran labor leader Manny Asuncion, as well as the extrajudicial killing of Dandy Miguel, regional labor leader, weeks after. Four unionists were extrajudicially killed in 2025.
– Two labor organizers have been disappeared and remain missing to this day: Elizabeth “Loi” Magbanua, disappeared on May 2022, and William Lariosa, disappeared on April 2024.
– There are currently 20 political detainees from the labor movement. All of them are victims of planted evidence and trumped-up charges and most of them were arrested and imprisoned under the fascist Rodrigo Duterte presidency.
– The government of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has overseen the increasing use of the Labor Secretary’s power to assume jurisdiction over labor disputes, which orders workers to go back to work lest they face repression, being laid off from work, or criminal charges and penalties, or all of these.
– The harassment, surveillance and red-tagging of labor activists continue across the country, especially in the Southern Tagalog and Southern Mindanao regions.

A clear proof of the dire situation of labor rights in the country is the Philippines’ inclusion in the shortlist released by the International Labour Organization’s Committee on the Application of Standards regarding violations of Convention No. 98 on the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining.

We note that the Marcos Jr government issued Executive Order 97, which bans red-tagging in the labor sector and reiterates provisions on workers’ rights to unionize and strike that are guaranteed by existing laws and which the Duterte regime flagrantly violated. EO 97, however, has not stopped the harassment, surveillance and red-tagging of labor activists, and has not ensured accountability of erring state personnel. The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the government agency responsible for promoting and almost-normalizing red-tagging, also remains operational.

We trust that the ITUC and the ILO will remain vigilant in tracking the state of labor rights in the Philippines. We are confident that these international labor institutions will see through the Marcos Jr government’s pretensions of upholding workers’ rights to unionize, collectively bargain and strike.