LABOR groups and Catholic higher education institutions (HEI) are now pushing to put an end to the government’s red-tagging campaign.
The Council of Global Unions (CGU) said it will be seeking the intervention of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to protect labor leaders against what they deemed baseless persecution by authorities.
It expressed alarm over the reports of workers, who were “invited” by the Philippine National Police before “being forced to admit they are members of the New People’s Army (NPA).”
CGU said, “It was an ‘invitation’ that one cannot refuse because of fear is a serious problem — this is like a repeat of military invitations during Marcos’ martial law. This act of ‘invitation’ is highly questionable and reprehensible.”
CGU said it plans to raise the issue together with the minimum wage hike during its scheduled dialogue with Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III on Wednesday.
Under study
The group said it will ask Bello to formally accept the Tripartite High Level Mission from the International Labor Organization (ILO) to look into the purported killings of 43 trade union leaders.
The mission was supposed to be accepted by DOLE last year, but it did not push through when the pandemic hit Philippine shores in March 2020.
In a SMS, Bello told BusinessMirror the proposal is currently still “under study.”
Members of the CGU include the local affiliates of the International Trade Union Confederation–Federation of Free Workers (FFW), Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), and Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Sentro)– and other international unions.
Catholic identity
For its part, the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) called out the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) for its “unsubstantiated claims” of tagging 38 of the organization’s member HEIs as recruitment grounds of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and NPA.
CEAP stressed its members do not tolerate recruitment from such leftist groups for opposing beliefs contrary to the “Catholic identity.”
“Our Catholic identity – enshrined in our values, vision, mission, goals, policy, and practice – is directly in opposition to the beliefs of the CPP and NPA. It has been said before, and we affirm it once more: we do not support the CPP and NPA,” CEAP said.
False claims
The group also belied the pronouncement of the NTF-Elcac that it was in constant talks with its members and that their failure to disclose the discussion of the said meetings with their constituents worsened communist influence within their jurisdiction.
“We categorically deny this. There was only one dialogue that was organized, and that was in October 24, 2018,” CEAP said.
CEAP added that the NTF-Elcac offered “no concrete proposals nor agreements were made, and no follow-ups” on how their members could combat supposed leftist recruitment among their students.
Instead of red-tagging its members, CEAP said the NTF-Elcac should just address the source of insurgency in the country, which was poverty and marginalization.