ADB projects should promote workers’ rights

The global Union Federations, on behalf of the Building and Wood Workers International, Public Services International, Union Network International, and International Transport Federation; together with more than 70 trade union leaders from Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Tonga, representing more than 15 million workers in Asia Pacific, holds the Asian Development Bank (ADB) accountable for the current power crisis in the Visayas and Mindanao. And this is because the ADB provided the loan to privatize the power sector way back in 2001, which paved the way for the enactment of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act.

As if the Philippine experience was not bad enough, the ADB and the Indonesian government collaborated to use the same model of power restructuring. When will they ever listen to us and learn from bankrupt policies anchored on a neoliberal globalization framework?

We also would like to express our strong opposition to the policy regulations of the rest of the multilateral development banks that are encouraging the proliferation of contractualization, which not only undermines the workers’ job security but also threatens the very existence of trade unions.

In solidarity with the Philippine working families and their national leaders, we will lobby the ADB to:

1. initiate a dialogue with the trade union organizations to review its inclusive growth policy and make it reflect workers’ interest in public utilities based on the principle of common good;

2. recognize and promote, as one of its official policies and regulations, the International Labor Organization’s Core Labor Standards to guarantee the workers’ right to self-organization and collective bargaining in ADB-funded projects.

Mabuhay ang Manggagawang Pilipino! Mabuhay tayong lahat!—KATHERINE LOH,

sub-regional secretary for South East Asia, Public Service International;

JAYASRI PRIYALAL, director, finance sector, UNI-APRO