No Union, No Strike Policy

Strikers tidy up banners at the picketline shelter at Nissan.

The plant gate at the Nissan export processing zone.

It is almost hard to believe that unions can exist at all in the Philippines.

The labour laws are stacked against workers. When workers manage to certify their union, the employer, more often than not, will fight every stage of bargaining through endless appeals to the Department of Labor and Employment, or DOLE, to the courts and all the way to the Supreme Court.

In those rare cases where the union wins at the Supreme Court, the employer can simply ignore its decision and, at worst, will get a slap on the wrist. According to progressive labour lawyers, no company in the history of the Philippines has ever been punished in any significant way for contempt of court or unfair labour practices.

While companies spend money to fight unions, workers, especially union leaders, would have either been illegally dismissed or been forced to strike.

This is pretty much what workers went through at the export processing zones in Southern Tagalog, where the Canadian union delegates visited the workers’ picket lines at Nissan and Nestlé. The unions at both plants have been on strike for about seven years.

It gets worse.

The Nissan industrial site enjoys the protection of a military detachment built in the nearby urban poor community during the heat of the strike. At least it was placed outside the plant, unlike the one at the Toyota site where soldiers out-of-uniform play basketball on a company court.

A young union leader showed the Steelworkers’ Peter Leibovitch and the PSAC’s Daniel Kinsella their picket shelter that they keep occupied 24-7. Its walls are patches of thin boards, and the roof is made up of thick canvas and cardboard held aloft by wooden and bamboo sticks. It would be indistinguishable from some of the surrounding shelters in the urban poor community except that it had strike banners and painted slogans on its walls. “Justice,” one slogan said in Pilipino.

A striker was napping on a wooden bed with no mattress in the middle of the shelter. He had apparently kept watch overnight. The young union leader, who didn’t want his name in print, said there are now only 160 workers who are still on strike, from the original 300. They take turns at the picket line. The rest have found other jobs, many outside the country.

The union leader said soldiers from the detachment had visited his house three times and interrogated him. They also tried to urge him to abandon the union because, the said, it was connected to the left-wing New People’s Army.

“I’m not doing anything illegal” was his response.

Still, he remains cautious and with good reason. The union president at the Nestlé strike, Diosdado Fortuna, was shot dead by unidentified men on motorcycles. It is widely suspected that his assassins were members of the military unit that was deployed inside and outside the Nestlé plant. After four years, the investigation has turned up nothing.

The Canadian delegates also visited the home of another assassinated union leader at EMI-Yazaki, which supplies electric harnesses to Toyota, Honda, Mazda and Chrysler. Gerry Cristobal was killed by unidentified men on March 8, 2008. The local police reported that the murder was the result of a traffic altercation but had no suspects.

“Gerry was shot by M-14s and M-16s (high-powered assault rifles),” said his wife. “No one carries those but the military and police.”

She provided lunch to the delegates, the current EMI-Yazaki union members and leaders, and the wife and child of yet another murdered union leader, Jesus Servida, also from EMI-Yazaki. He was shot along with another union member who survived the attack. There’s been no progress in the investigation of this incident that took place on December 11, 2006.

“We’re still looking for justice,” the current president of EMI-Yazaki said. “In the meantime we continue to organize and educate workers. We continue to oppose the unwritten no union, no strike policy at export processing zones.”

Daniel Kinsella (PSAC) and Peter Leibovitch (USW) with the widow (front row, in black) of assassinated union leader Gerry Cristobal, the widow and child (to right of Mrs. Cristobal) of Jesus Servida and the current union leaders at EMI-Yazaki.