Marcia Brown
CWA members, joined by activists from the BPO industry employees network BIEN, and the Filipina women’s rights group GABRIELA, protest the jailing of Filipina union activist Anne Krueger, outside the Embassy of the Philippines, Washington, D.C., November 2019.
Three years ago, Anne Krueger, a labor organizer and progressive activist in the Philippines, opened her home to host members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The delegation traveled to the Philippines during the Verizon strike after Filipino workers had refused the transoceanic strikebreaking work the company was attempting to force on them. Instead, they, too, joined the picket lines.
But on October 31, military police in the Philippines raided the regional offices of progressive and union organizations in Bacolod and Manila. They planted two pistols and eight bullets as a pretext for the arrests in Bacolod, and arrested 58 people total, Rappler reported. Among those arrested was Krueger. A week after the arrest, dozens of activists, labor leaders, and workers gathered outside the Embassy of the Philippines in Washington, D.C., to protest the Duterte government’s unjust detention of a fellow organizer.
“Our CWA family is here today because three years ago, call center workers in the Philippines reached out to us during our 49-day strike at Verizon and said they were receiving struck calls,” said CWA’s Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens in remarks at the rally. “They didn’t want to be scabs.” Krueger and her partner, Michael de la Concepcion, have six children and when the delegation visited three years ago, they welcomed CWA members into their home. The memory makes Krueger’s arrest even more vivid for CWA members.
Several dozen activists were released from prison “for lack of probable cause.” On November 11, Krueger was released after 12 days on a bail of 220,000 Philippine pesos—which comes to more than $4,000. Krueger has been charged with two counts of illegal possession of firearms in two different courts, so the bail was paid to two different courts. Trials are set for November 29 and December 2 in the two courts.
On November 15, Senator Bernie Sanders condemned the Duterte government for its “abhorrent human rights abuses.” He added, “This repression of trade unionists is a shameful attempt to silence people’s rights and freedoms.” In response, the Duterte government’s Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said that Sanders was “grandstanding on an issue he obviously does not know the details of, not to mention meddling in our national affairs, which he has no business over.”
Marcia Brown
CWA members protesting at the Embassy of the Philippines, Washington, D.C, November 2019
Those arrested on October 31 were members of the BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN), a Filipino group that helps call center workers organize and stand up for their rights. The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry enables businesses to outsource certain “non-primary business activities” to a third party in order to pay lower wages and escape offering benefits to their workers, and to reduce their taxes. Steffens described BPO as “a global industry built on a race to the bottom for low wages for customer service work.”
Mylene Cabalona, president of BIEN, said in an interview that the arrests are part of a systematic effort by the Duterte government to crack down on unionists and activists.
BIEN, she said, is the only organization in the Philippines for call center workers and has about 3,000 members. The group has been organizing call center employees since 2011, and was recognized as a labor association in 2013 by the Philippines’ Department of Labor and Employment—before Duterte came to power. Now, Cabalona added, the Duterte government is alleging that BIEN is a legal front for communists. Cabalona said that the government, in a statement released by the Philippine News Agency after the raids, “had concocted this story that Anne is apparently a member of the NPA”—or the New People’s Army, which is the armed branch of the communist movement in the Philippines.
“They’re trying to ‘red-tag’ us through the media,” Cabalona said, referring to the government’s tactic of “red-tagging” organizations and individuals who oppose Duterte as “communist” and “terrorist.”
Filipino organizers were expecting something like this, Cabalona said. “It’s been happening since 2017 when Duterte came to power. They pick on individuals and activists. They automatically plant evidence against the person.”
In this case, she added, one judge signed ten search warrants, only six of which were used in the October 31 raids. “So we were all on standby,” Cabalona said, expressing fear for her own safety. She told me that she plans to move again and that her colleagues are similarly afraid. One BIEN member told her that he’d noticed someone tailing him. “It’s really alarming because you always have to look over your shoulder,” she said.
CWA has close ties to BIEN and especially to Krueger. This past August, another CWA delegation traveled to the Philippines to build solidarity with the group and to learn about workers’ conditions abroad. Kendra Williams, a CWA steward for Local 6215 in Dallas, Texas, was on the delegation, where she met Krueger. She expressed deep concern for Krueger and her family. “I’m a mother myself. I have three kids,” she said. “We always want better [for our kids. Krueger is] trying to build something for the future of her children.”
Krueger and her co-workers were “not breaking any rules or regulations,” Williams said, in trying “to form a union. That’s why it’s important for CWA to get this word out.”
Brenda Roberts, CWA’s vice president of District 7 in Colorado, was also part of the delegation that went to the Philippines in August. CWA has long emphasized the need to build unions abroad as well as at home. Now that work in industries like telecommunications is done globally, the low wages of non-union work anywhere can lower wages everywhere. “If we can’t lift [Filipino workers] up,” said Roberts, “it will impact negatively on the work that’s being done in the U.S.”
“We have to keep in the spotlight what’s happening in the Philippines in order to make it stop,” Roberts said. “[Duterte] is already responsible for the murder of 40 unionists since he’s been in office.”
CWA’s outrage at Krueger’s and others’ arrests was evident at the protest in Washington. Protesters joined in chants of “Organizing is not a crime.”
“We’re here to support Anne Krueger, who was arrested, because the organization BIEN has been supportive of workers in the U.S.,” said Guerino Calemine, CWA’s chief of staff. He recalled how Krueger and BIEN set up picket lines to stop workers in the Philippines from picking up the work of American workers on strike against Verizon.
Protesters also called for a temporary halt of U.S. military aid to the Philippines in order to pressure the Duterte government to stop its human rights abuses. Last year, the U.S. government sent $193 million in military aid to the Philippines. Roberts added that CWA has joined forces with the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers to help provide counsel in Manila to organizers and activists arrested as part of the raids.
Marcia Brown
CWA protest, Embassy of the Philippines, Washington, D.C., November 2019
BPO workers are a major economic driver in the Philippines, but despite their economic importance—or perhaps because of it—the government refuses to heed workers’ demands on workplace safety, a national minimum wage, and the ability to organize. “They’re not allowing us to be heard.” Cabalona said. “Basically, we are the voiceless industry.”
