April 24 marks the first anniversary of full-time Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) union organizer Alex Dolorosa’s murder in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental and our call for justice continues.
Dolorosa, a member and paralegal officer of the BPO Industry Employees Network or BIEN and an LGBT activist of BE GLAD, was found dead near a chicken coop on April 25, 2023. His body sustained 23 stab wounds.
The 38-year-old-Dolorosa reported to BIEN cases of harassment and surveillance: on January 25, 2021, in the Bayan Muna office in Bacolod City; on January 4, 2022, in the Gabriela office in Bacolod City; and on May 4, 2022, again in said Gabriela office. He also reported that he saw suspicous men surveilling his residence in Bata Subdivision.
One day after Dolorosa’s murder, the Philippine government’s National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) red-tagged BIEN, alongside labor education NGO Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research or EILER, as if to justify his killing.
Alex went into full-time union organizing in 2021 for BPO workers’ higher salaries, better working conditions, and other labor rights. Days before his murder, he helped BPO colleagues win four labor cases.
Alex’s gruesome murder remains unsolved. Labor rights advocates have every reason to believe that it is politically-motivated. It cannot be separated from the government’s responsibility for the killing of many labor activists that many labor groups believe that the government itself orders. The government has created a culture of impunity because of its inability to apprehend and prosecute those responsible for these murders.
When labor organizers like Alex are murdered, workers suffer. It weakens the labor movement and workers’ participation in governance.
CTUHR reiterates its demand that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr himself make unequivocal statements and take resolute actions to end the killing of labor activists in the country. The government’s red-tagging machine, led by the NTF-ELCAC, must be abolished. Unionism must not be equated with support for the armed insurgency or with terrorism.
