The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) acknowledges President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s signing, last September 19, of an executive order affirming workers’ right to unionization. We consider this a positive development, but workers and their advocates will remain vigilant towards the order’s implementation.

Executive Order No. 97 orders all government agencies to uphold workers’ rights to freedom of association and expression. It embodies a departure from the outright declarations of the Rodrigo Duterte government, for example through the whole-of-nation approach to the armed insurgency or the documents of its Joint Industrial Peace Concerns Office (JIPCO), against so-called militant unionism and all forms of unionism.

We note the restraint placed by EO 97 on the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), Philippine National Police (PNP), Armed Forces of the Philippines), and local government units (LGUs) in directly interfering in union activities and engaging with workers organizations on matters that fall within the role of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). We also note the reiteration of the limits to the role of the police in labor disputes and the ban on warrantless arrests in relation to cases arising from labor disputes.

At the same time, we protest EO 97’s provisions recognizing the legitimacy of military presence, in terms of detachments and patrol bases, in labor disputes and military forums in workplaces – provisions which are not even in the country’s Labor Code of 1974. The military must have no role whatsoever in labor disputes and the existing provisions must either be scrapped or further restricted with many guidelines.

We also protest the continued existence of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) which presided over and carried out the violations of workers’ union rights in the guise of a whole-of-nation approach to the armed insurgency. The NTF-ELCAC must be abolished completely, and its continued existence poses a serious threat to workers’ rights.

One of the most significant aspects of this document is the imposition of a ban on the red-tagging of workers’ organizations as fronts or allies of the Communist-led armed insurgency. EO 97 states that “No agency or stakeholder shall engage in labeling of workers, union members, trade unions, or organizations” and defines labelling as “the act of accusing, denouncing, attacking or persecuting any individual or organization as a communist, terrorist, or sympathizer without legal basis and due process of law.” We call on the Marcos Jr government to implement this ban and to legislate the criminalization of red-tagging.

At the same time, we call attention to cases of red-tagging that were carried out by government agencies during the period when EO 97’s predecessor, the Joint Memorandum Order No. 1, series of 2024, or the Omnibus Guidelines on the Exercise of Freedom of Association and Civil Liberties, dated April 26, 2024, was in effect. Among these cases are the following:

(1) In July and August 2025, two labor organizers in Davao were redtagged and harassed by military personnel: https://ctuhr.org/releases/davao-labor-organizers-harassment-attack-on-union-rights/
(2) In March 2025, labor NGO Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER) was red-tagged by unknown individuals: https://ctuhr.org/releases/labor-ngos-harassment-shows-continuing-repression-of-unionism/
(3) In February 2025, Kilusang Mayo Uno-Cordillera spokesperson Mike Cabangon faced a terrorist financing case, a form of red-tagging by the PNP: https://ctuhr.org/releases/terror-financing-case-vs-cordillera-labor-leader-harassment-must-be-junked/
(4) In May 2024, AMA-Sugbo-KMU chairperson Jaime Paglinawan, together with 26 NGO workers in Cebu, were red-tagged publicly and charged with a terrorist financing case, by the PNP:
https://ctuhr.org/releases/terrorist-financing-cases-rights-violations-vs-labor-rising/

We recognize that EO 97 takes off from the Omnibus Guidelines mentioned above, which was created through government consultation with both employers’ and workers’ groups. We also recognize that the Omnibus Guidelines was an outcome of the International Labour Organization (ILO) High-Level Tripartite Mission (HLTM) to the Philippines in 2023.

CTUHR worked with labor groups and NGOs in the country to push for the mission and to ensure the mission’s success. The mission, the Omnibus Guidelines, and EO 97 are victories of the labor movement and the Filipino workers and people. They were not given to the Filipino workers on a silver platter but were products of workers’ resolute and unremitting struggle even during the darkest days of the fascist Duterte regime.

We in CTUHR demand that the Marcos Jr government ensure greater and improved worker participation in the monitoring and implementation of EO 97. We urge the Filipino workers and people and the labor movement to be vigilant towards the DOLE’s role of monitoring the implementation of, and government compliance with, EO 97. 

Only the participation of Filipino workers and the labor movement will ensure that the reports submitted by the Inter-Agency Committee for the Protection of the Freedom of Association and Right to Organize of Workers, created in 2023, to the Office of the President will be truthful to the rights situation faced by workers. We note that the National Tripartite Industrial Peace Council (NTIPC) and the Tripartite Monitoring Board has not taken any strides in relation to the cases filed by labor before the ILO since the ILO HLTM in 2023.

While EO 97 embodies an improvement, it does not remove the various barriers that hinder workers from exercising their right to freedom of association: widespread joblessness that force workers to accept labor rights violations, contractualization, employers’ capacity to retrench workers who unionize coupled with the slow functioning of the country’s labor courts, the Labor Secretary’s power to assume jurisdiction over labor disputes and other means of justifying repression of workers’ strikes and protests.