Today, October 7, we mark World Day for Decent Work amidst candidates’ filing of candidacies for the 2025 mid-term elections before the Commission on Elections. We call on all candidates running for the Senate, the House of Representatives, and local government positions to immediately bare their agenda for decent jobs in the country.

Decent work is an agenda for the Filipino workers and people, and it should be an agenda for the 2025 elections. Amidst the rising prices of food and other basic goods, as well as the soaring payments for various services, decent work is an urgent necessity. We ask candidates for the Senate, Congress and local government positions: what are your stands on workers’ calls for living wages, job security, safe workplaces, and the right to unionize and strike?

Today, newspaper headlines carry President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s vow to make the Philippines more conducive to foreign investments. Attracting foreign investments to create jobs in the country has been a long-standing government policy. It has so far failed to create sufficient and decent jobs for Filipinos. It is way past time to rethink this policy.

The country’s experience shows that we cannot continue to be a service and labor-exporting economy and expect the economy to create decent jobs and become a developed country. Service sector jobs suffer from huge decent work deficits; overseas work is largely similar even as many Filipinos find them more acceptable.  

The experience of our neighbors in Southeast Asia and in Asia shows that countries can only create decent jobs and develop economically by developing agriculture and industries. The development process must be led by a pro-people government, not by governments that simply offer cheap and repressed labor to foreign investors.

We mark World Day for Decent Work in the Philippines amidst continuing repression of the labor movement. Labor activists and leaders continue to be harassed, threatened, abducted, and even killed. The government has been equating trade unionism with rebellion, wanting to crush dissent in the process of ending insurgency.

We therefore unite with the UNI Global Union, which says that for this year’s World Day for Decent Work, “the global trade union movement is calling for peace and democracy” amidst “creeping authoritarianism and expanding military conflict” in the world.

In the Philippines, the government has been responding to the armed insurgency with an iron fist, rather than engaging the rebels in constructive talks and implementing socio-economic reforms. Its militaristic approach has strengthened the power of the military and the police, crippled labor and human rights, and brought about creeping authoritarianism.

We support UNI Global Union’s call for peace in Gaza, Myanmar and Ukraine. Decent work is not possible without peace – as well as social justice and decent standards of living for workers, the poor and all peoples.###