Daisy S. Arago

Daisy Arago is an activist and a labour and human rights defender, has supported workers organising and built civil society coalitions in the Philippines for many years. A Political Science graduate, she is a researcher and trainer and has been executive director of the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights(CTUHR), a Philippines-based labour rights organisation engaged in monitoring, research, investigation, documentation, advocacy and capacity building for unions, workers and community organisations for over 20 years. 

Daisy has co-designed numerous worker-led data collection programs and campaigns, with a focus on gender equality at the workplace, and conducted trainings on feminist participatory action research for the Labour and Climate Justice programme of the APWLD. 

APWLD interviewed Daisy in January-February 2021 and below is her story.

Organising workers

As an activist and human rights defender in the Philippines for many years, I have supported workers organising and building coalitions among civil society. 

In 1990, when I joined Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC) in Hongkong, my objectives were to acquire skills and experience and to become aware of different types of reality, especially for workers. Workers are very close to my heart because I come from a farmer’s family.

I worked there as an information officer to respond to different requests from various unions and groups in the global auto sector and connect the Philippines labour movement through two unions in Asia, establishing leadership for workers.

When working at AMRC, I had the opportunity to study how globalisation affected workers on the ground. I realised many workers weren’t aware of what was going on outside their workplace. So I engaged in research on different realities of workers and unions, including how developed countries use trade and investment to manipulate third-world countries. I then went back to the Philippines and started volunteering as a freelance researcher for Philippine trade unions, church groups and the International Young Christian Workers (IYCW) project with Tri-continental Center.

I worked on exchange programs with developing countries during that period. We were sharing labour activities in different countries. It is always challenging to understand globalisation and how it exerts itself. Therefore, I studied capitalism, globalisation and structural adjustment. For example, how it changed the economic structure and affected people or workers on the ground. 

At that time, I was aware that many movements were very focused on their work. The awareness movement in the Philippines, for example, focused on middle-class or middle-class women, not grassroots women. The human rights movement also excluded labour rights. Back then, the human rights movement was largely dominated by people with college degrees who didn’t concern themselves with grassroots movements. As for unions, they were primarily concerned with collective bargaining, forming unions and expanding membership, not holistically as they are now.

Two years of volunteering myself, I still saw a need for workers to understand what was happening globally. As a result, I joined YCW (Young Christian Workers) as the Education and Training Officer with a focus on organising workers more holistically. We discussed the political environment, the organising environment and personal development politically, socially, and culturally.

Three years later, I was elected as the National President of Young Christian Workers of the Philippines (YCWP). When I joined the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) in 2001, my objective was to mainstream labour rights as part of the human rights movement. At that time, the labour rights movement, human rights movement and feminist movement existed separately in the Philippines and needed to increase solidarity.

It was very challenging. There was a space for the Philippine government in the extrajudicial killing of activists. Because of this, I worked with UN Special Rappers who came to the Philippines for extrajudicial killings, which provided an opportunity to unite labour rights with human rights. From then to 2007, the labour movement became part of the human rights movement. Yet, at the time, women’s rights to work were not present. And I was not part of the feminist movement but a labour activist.

Sooner, I increased solidarity between the labour movement and the feminist movement when I was involved with APWLD.

Growing together with APWLD

In 2008, I joined the GMFP discussion. The Philippines’ scheduled delegate could not attend, so I got the opportunity. At that time, what impressed me the most was the issues surrounding migration – many women were forced to migrate. Therefore, I became a member of the Migration and Labour Task Force.

CTUHR also was part of Climate Justice FPAR. During the FPAR, we discussed how women respond to the climate crisis in a new liberal globalisation context. And the method of FPAR is very useful and has become a tool for many women’s organisations. We learned a lot from APWLD. We applied GFMP analyses in the workplace, communities, families and society. We analysed power patterns, wages, insecure jobs, work insurance and instrumentalisation, especially for women. We talked about the oppressions facing women: the disparity is always given to males rather than female family members; women always do more household responsibilities, and men rarely do food preparation; in communities, women also have less participation due to their duty in the house. Also, we discussed how to go deeper. We analysed employment laws, regulations, company papers and different rules – who made these laws? How do we change reality?

APWLD contributed to the analysis process. Taking a look at this system, GMFP sustains itself by feeding one another. All these analyses unmasked the intersectionalities. And the system is reflected in our education, reflected in how we see and explain everything in this society. It is also reflected in our actions. APWLD’s analysis helped us to see if our analysis and our actions were correct.

I was involved in the CJ and BOOM FPAR as a mentor in 2014. I was delighted at the end of FPAR that we were able to submit our creation to multiple stakeholders, including different counsellor organisations and individuals, for resisting the climate crisis. Since then, I have been invited to join FPAR frequently to share our experience in documenting, researching and organising women workers using FPAR.

FPAR takes time, but its main significance is that it empowers and organises grassroots women. I have been researching and organising grassroots communities, especially in female-dominated industries. I find FPAR a very effective tool, though it takes a cycle to see how women become empowered and how they change.

Ways moving forward 

The Labour programme is a bit complicated because it involves political, economic, social, cultural and legal issues. It is important to consider everything, and we need to address and confront capitalism. Workers or labourers are cheaper in developing countries because capitalism needs more hands in factories to sustain capitalist production.

For labour FPAR, the challenge is learning each problem and integrating it all. It’s impossible to do it alone for the labour movement. Organise people together and do it collectively. For the labour movement, another challenge is how to integrate it into other movements and embrace other issues. We are facing multiple issues and problems. We need to learn how to respond to these issues simultaneously, although we have different realities.

Currently, workers in the Philippines are in a rigorous environment. Many human rights defenders have been killed, and even in the whole world, unionists work in danger for defending labour rights. Capitalism often bans labour rights because the latter undermines the former.

In this situation, integrating labour rights into other issues, expanding workers` issues, linking to other marginalised people, and associating with movements in different countries are our solutions. 

CTUHR established a Labour Rights Defender Network at the national and regional levels in 2019 and hopes APWLD could be further involved with this network which will help against the violation of labour rights. During this pandemic, one of its topics is how this pandemic has changed laws which caused wage decline, unemployment and displacement. 

APWLD is part of the movement that is looking for ways to make a difference in society. I like the Development Justice framework because it unmasked a system to make the rich richer and it has also encouraged, inspired and organised many women in Asia and the Pacific. Thanks to APWLD, I have started a fantastic journey with perspectives from different countries and met different people and organisations. I saw how other grassroots communities and the UN work. Thus, I am able to find better ways to organise the labour movement.