Curse or Challenge: Contractualization’s Barriers to Unionization in the Philippines

Abstract

While the Philippine labor movement became stronger under repressive conditions during the Marcos dictatorship, it has weakened considerably in recent decades despite Constitutional and legal guarantees to workers’ rights to unionize and organize. Some scholars attribute this decline in strength to the spread of contractual labor. This article contributes to understanding the labor movement’s decline by examining the challenges that contractualization poses to contractuals’ unionization. Using a case study method and in-depth interviews with union leaders, this article examines the barriers to contractuals’ unionization in six manufacturing companies during the height of the Rodrigo Duterte government’s actions against illegal contractualization. It builds on labor scholar Frederic Deyo’s insight that economic controls on labor have overtaken political ones under neoliberal globalization in Southeast Asia and argues that with regard to contractuals’ unionization, legal barriers predominate, economic barriers exist, and political barriers persist.