NAGKAISA Welcomes ICJ Opinion: Right to Strike Is Protected, Not Silenced

The biggest labor coalition in the coubtry welcomes the landmark advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice affirming that the right to strike is protected under ILO Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise.

By a 10-4 vote, the World Court confirmed what workers have long known: the right to organize must include the right to act together.

In our Constitution, the right to strike is clear, express, and recognized. What is the value of the right to organize and collectively negotiate if workers have no right to strike? It would be like a bell without a sound — visible, perhaps even decorative, but powerless to ring when justice must be heard.

“The right to strike is not a crime, not a tantrum, and not a nuisance. Kaya wag i-redtag ang mga manggagawa exercising collective right to stop eorking due to a labor dispute. It is a democratic safety valve when dialogue breaks down and workers are pushed to the wall,” NAGKAISA Labor Coslition said.

Freedom of association without the right to strike is like a union with a mouth but no voice, a bell with no sound, and a Constitution with labor rights written in ink but denied in practice.

NAGKAISA calls on government and employers to respect workers’ right to organize, collectively bargain, and, when necessary, peacefully strike in defense of discrimination and harassment for organizing union, union busting, wages, dignity, and justice.

Workers are not machines, algorithms, or disposable manpower. When workers ring the bell of justice, the law must not mute the sound.

Emergency Power without Sectoral Consultation and Cohesive Plan is Prone to Abuse

The declaration of a national state of energy emergency by Ferdinand Marcos Jr. raises serious questions among them, the lack of clear plan and democratic consultations with different sectors.

Extraordinary powers demand a clear plan. Yet the government has not presented a concrete strategy explaining how these emergency powers will actually address the crisis. Declaring a national emergency without a clear roadmap is the perfect recipe for abuse.

Executive Order No. 110 itself concedes that the measures to address the crisis are to be undertaken ‘under existing laws.’ In other words, the power was always there - the plan was not.

Instead of resorting to sweeping emergency measures without a clear program, the President should have convened a national summit bringing together workers, employers, farmers, transport groups, and civil society to unite the country around a common strategy to confront the crisis.

Workers and ordinary people are the ones suffering from rising prices and economic uncertainty. They deserve more than vague declarations and emergency powers.

If the government has no clear answers and ends up more confused than the vulnerable sectors, then it should have the humility to ask the people. Real solutions will not come from emergency proclamations but from a nation mobilized behind a clear, democratic plan to confront the crisis.

Workers do not need a state of emergency; they need a State with a plan. If government cannot present one, it should at least have the humility to listen by convening a forum for consultation —otherwise, all we have is sound and fury, signifying nothing.

PRESS STATEMENT

25 March 2006

Nagkaisa Labor Coalition

NAGKAISA STATEMENT ON THE U.S. ATTACK ON VENEZUELA

NAGKAISA condemns in the strongest terms the U.S. military attack on Venezuela. This act of aggression violates national sovereignty and international law and directly endangers the lives, jobs, and welfare of Venezuelan workers and their families.

As trade unionists, we recognize that war, foreign intervention, and economic coercion always fall hardest on working people—destroying livelihoods, weakening labor rights, and undermining public services. This attack is clearly another attempt by the United States to secure control over Venezuela’s vast oil resources, once again putting profit and corporate interests over the lives and rights of workers.

We are not blind to Venezuela’s internal political crisis. Maduro’s democratic legitimacy has long been contested—particularly his 2018 election and his most recent third term vote, which the opposition and many observers have challenged as tainted by fraud, intimidation, and violence. But even contested legitimacy does not give any foreign power a legal license to invade, bomb, kidnap, or “run” another country. The future of Venezuela must be decided by Venezuelans, through genuinely free and credible democratic processes—not by foreign guns, sanctions, or geopolitical fiat.

Even if the US president claims that his country has serious grievances against Maduro and his wife, it cannot simply attack another sovereign nation without violating international law: the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force (Article 2(4)), and the core principles of sovereignty and non-intervention. Absent UN Security Council authorization or a valid claim of self-defense under Article 51, such an invasion is unlawful and offends peremptory (jus cogens) norms, including the prohibition of aggression.

The Trump administration might have committed the crime of aggression, which the court at Nuremberg described as the supreme crime, and commonly understood by the community of nations as “the worst crime of all.”

NAGKAISA stands in solidarity with Venezuelan workers and trade unions in their struggle for peace, democracy, and social justice. We call on workers’ organizations and democratic movements worldwide to oppose imperialist war, resource plunder, and all forms of foreign domination.

Hands off Venezuela.

Stop imperialist war and resource grabbing.

#HandsOffVenezuela

Statement of the NAGKAISA Labor Coalition for the Immediate and Unconditional Release of Lee Cheuk Yan

The NAGKAISA Labor Coalition stands in firm solidarity with our comrades in the global labour and civil society movement in calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Lee Cheuk Yan.

Lee, a well-known labour leader and pro-democracy activist, has been targeted under the sweeping provisions of China’s National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong in 2020—accused of “inciting subversion of state power” for his involvement in the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China and the exercise of his most basic rights: freedom of assembly, association, expression and memory.

We affirm that:

• The criminalisation of Lee’s peaceful work is a direct assault on trade union freedoms, on democratic space, and on the dignity of workers everywhere.

• The fact that Lee and others have been held for over 1,500 days for acting in defence of rights reveals the scale of repression we are up against.

• When the right to remember past struggles is suppressed, the right to organise for the future is weakened. The Hong Kong Alliance’s decades-long work to commemorate the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen protests is at the heart of this challenge.

Therefore, NAGKAISA calls on:

1. The Hong Kong authorities and relevant governments to drop all charges against Lee Cheuk Yan and to release him immediately and unconditionally.

2. Labour organisations, human rights institutions and governments around the world to monitor the trial closely, to apply diplomatic and moral pressure, and to stand together in solidarity.

3. Filipino unions and the broad labour movement in the Philippines to raise Lee’s case, to recognise its significance for workers’ rights globally, and to reaffirm that we are interconnected—when union freedom is undermined in one place, it is weakened everywhere.

We in NAGKAISA pledge:

• We will elevate Lee’s case in our national forums and international engagements.

• We will continue to stand in solidarity with colleagues in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region who are under threat.

• We will continue to defend the principle that there can be no labour justice without human rights.

For the freedom of Lee Cheuk Yan. For the dignity of workers everywhere.