Compliance with intl labor pacts seen to lure investors

THE country’s largest labor group said the country’s compliance to international labor conventions will help bring more investments in the country.

“This is the key to upgrading our attractiveness to foreign direct investments (FDIs) and to locators whose products are marketed to progressive economies whose consumers place primacy on good governance and good labor practices. Good human rights and good labor practices, after all, is good economics,” Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) Vice President Luis Manuel C. Corral was quoted in a statement as saying.

Corral made the pronouncement last Sunday after President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. announced last week that he will be pushing for the completion of the Philippine-European Union Free Trade Agreement (EU-PH FTA) and renewal of the EU GSP-Plus.

Marcos said that both arrangements are expected to further boost the country’s trade with European nations.

TUCP, however, noted that currently the country has yet to show “firm commitment” to the observance of human rights and international labor standards based on the findings of the High Level Tripartite Mission of the International Labor Organization (ILO).

According to Corral, the country’s observance of ILO Convention 87 has been the subject of at least three high-level technical missions of the ILO since 2009.

The latest, he added, was the January 2023 High Level Tripartite Mission (HLTM), which reiterated the long-standing concerns on anti-union violence, political profiling and impunity.

“State security forces must stop viewing legitimate trade unionism from the prism of anti-insurgency. This aberrant perspective has led to aggressive red-tagging and political profiling of even responsible labor centers whose union leaders and members are only exercising their fundamental labor rights,” he added.

The labor leader urged the concerned government agencies to address the matter to prevent “derailment” of the efforts of the President to attract more investors in the country.

Corral said this can be done by “addressing long-standing workers’ issues, passing the long-committed labor legislations to align the Labor Code with the core standards, and pursuing the ratification of essential ILO conventions.

“Upholding fundamental labor rights, ensuring core labor standards, and safeguarding the dignity of each and every worker will firmly establish the Marcos Administration as a modern and modernizing presidency that fosters race-to-the-top labor relations,” he said.