Filipino union leader visits Hawaii

Oct. 28—A Filipino labor leader made Honolulu his final stop on a cross-country trip to walk U.S. picket lines and urge unions to condemn the killings of Filipino organizers and union members.

A Filipino labor leader made Honolulu his final stop on a cross-country trip to walk U.S. picket lines and urge unions to condemn the killings of Filipino organizers and union members.

Elmer C. Labog, the 68-year-old chair of Kilusang Mayo Uno—similar to America's AFL-CIO—worked as a hotel bartender as a 20-year-old and reluctantly joined a Filipino hotel and restaurant workers union under then-President Ferdinand Marcos.

The KMU, Labog said, has since helped a coalition of Filipino labor organizations to focus on three key issues : higher pay ; greater rights for contract workers and an end to trade union rights violations ; and the arrests and killings of union members and leaders "on trumped-up charges."

During his career working on behalf of union members, Labog said, there has been little progress since the days of martial law under the Marcos regime, through the controversial reign of President Rodrigo Duterte and now into the presidency of Marcos' son, Ferdinand "Bongbong " Marcos, who campaigned as a reformist but who Labog said continues the legacy of anti-union harassment.

Some 72 labor leaders and organizers have been killed between the presidencies of Duterte and Marcos Jr., Labog said.

"It's one long continuous attacks on labor rights, " Labog said Thursday. He plans to return to the Philippines today.

Marcos Jr., Labog said, "has the same policies of his father and that of Duterte."

The Filipino Consul General of Honolulu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The killings include the Sept. 29 shooting of Jude Thaddeus Fernandez, a 67-year-old longtime labor organizer and leader who was shot to death by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Philippine National Police in the house where he was staying in Binangonan, Rizal province.

Police said he "fought back, " Labog said. "We don't even know why they were looking for him."

The killings have been condemned internationally and by U.S. labor organizations.

The Solidarity Center allies with the AFL-CIO and calls itself "the largest U.S.-based international worker rights organization helping workers attain safe and healthy workplaces, family-supporting wages, dignity on the job, widespread democracy and greater equity at work and in their community."

It condemned Fernandez's killing, saying he "was mobilizing his community in a campaign to raise wages and end government corruption and human rights violations. Four union leaders and members have been murdered in the Philippines this year. The International Trade Union Confederation also ranks the Philippines as one of the ten worst countries for worker rights."

As a student, Labog had been imprisoned for a year for protesting Marcos' imposition of martial law that also resulted in arrests of other student demonstrators and union members and leaders.

So Labog wanted nothing to do with organized labor when he later worked at a five-star hotel in Manilla, built to coincide with the Philippines' hosting of the 1976 International Monetary Fund and World Bank conference.

About 100 construction workers who helped build the hotel entered the lobby during a celebration of its opening and asked for food from one of the events, which resulted in an attempt to physically force them out.

"I wanted to speak up and defend them and yelled at the security guards, 'They are the ones who (built ) the hotel, and now you're pushing them out just for asking for food ?'"

The owner of the hotel showed up at the confrontation and "asked who I was, " Labog said. "I said, 'Your guards are really rude against these construction workers.'"

The construction workers left with their food.

"I became popular because of this incident, " Labog said.

The next he knew, Labog was elected vice president of his union.

"I said, 'Oh my God, what happened ?'"

More than 40 years later, Labog just finished crisscrossing the mainland in more than 20 cities, meeting with U.S. labor unions and walking picket lines in support of striking actors and then-striking writers in New York and with Ford United Auto Workers members in Chicago.

He traveled up and down the West Coast and talked with Jollibee fried chicken employees trying to organize in Seattle, and unionized hotel workers in San Diego.

While in Honolulu last week, Labog picketed with United Airlines employees at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, met members of the Hawaii Nurses Association and talked with union leaders including Unite Here Local 5, which represents many hotel workers of Filipino descent and immigrants.

He urged individual Hawaii union members to encourage their leaders to also write to the Philippine government to condemn the harassment and killings of Filipino union members and leaders. He also asked union leaders to help raise bail money for union leaders arrested on charges that they were drug dealers.

The U.S. trip, Labog said, was to "show solidarity of the struggle of workers."

Out of a Filipino workforce of 52 million, only about 2 million are union members, Labog said.

As a result, the average salary remains just $11.70 per day—"but much higher " for union employees.

Nonunionized migrant workers earn much less, often paid "under the table " in cash, with no job security or leverage, Labog said, just like in Hawaii "and all across the U.S."

While in Honolulu, Labog also met with Leyton Torda, assistant business manger with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1186, who was shocked at the labor situation in the Philippines and impressed with Labog's knowledge of unions in Hawaii and on the mainland.

Ilocanos in Hawaii tend to support Marcos Jr., Torda said, and "I wish he (Labog ) had a bigger audience here, especially with Filipinos."

In the 1970s the IBEW in Hawaii was so packed with Japanese Americans it was known as "the shogun union, " Torda said, until union leader Akito "Blackie " Fujikawa began efforts to diversify, especially with Hawaiians and Filipinos.

Now 25 years into his own union career, Torda—a third-generation Filipino—said he has become the highest-ranking local IBEW leader.

After talking with Labog, Torda wants to tell other union members, especially Filipinos, what's happening in the Philippines.

"I was surprised, " Torda said. "A lot of Filipinos are in the trades. I'm sure that most of them don't know about these stories. But I'm going to share them."