Elmer “Bong” Labog (Chairperson, KMU) will be in Sydney as part of the Solidarity Tour for KMU organised by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), Union Aid Abroad (APHEDA) and the Philippine Australia Union Links (PAUL), announced Mr EJ dela Cruz of Migrante Australia New South Wales.
PHOTO – Migrante Australia during a recently held national conference
Together with Meryl Quero-Asa (International Affairs Officer, KMU), they will meet unions, parliamentarians and community organisations to enlighten them on the growing trade union repression and other human rights abuses in the Philippines.
With the growing number of Filipino migrant workers in Australia, it is important that Filipino workers here know their rights and that the best way to protect their work rights is to be part of a union.
In Sydney, a forum on “Repression and Resistance: The Filipino Workers in the Time of Duterte” will be held on the 23rd of February (Sunday), from 1-4 pm at the AMWU office, 133 Parramatta Rd corner Good St. Granville NSW, Mr Ej dela Cruz said.
This will be a good opportunity for the Filipino community – the Filipino migrant workers in general – to hear directly from front liners of workers struggle in the Philippines. At this very critical period, Filipino workers and progressive unions are being targeted for arrest and even extrajudicial killing (to date, over 43 union members and officials were extrajudicially killed). Under Duterte, unionism – organising, asserting the right to collectively bargain and to launch strikes against management abuses and exploitative company policies have become criminal acts.
KMU is an independent trade union federation that represents over 115,000 union members. KMU and its affiliates have been increasingly targeted by the Duterte government but it has never stopped denouncing, resisting and fighting against the Duterte government’s scheme to outlaw progressive unionism and arrest unionists, workers and their supporters.