With the celebration of February 14 as love day and feast day of one or two Christian martyrs, the Associated Labor Unions (ALU) and Building and Wood Workers International (BWI) memorialized the Philippine enactment of Republic Act 7877 or the Anti-Sexual Harassment Act on the same day in 1995.
The ALU National Executive Vice President Gerard Seno called for an end to sexual harassment in the employment, education and training environment, online, and public spaces. He expressed alarm by the seeming continuing relegation of gender-based violence at the last order of everyone’s battle especially during this COVID19 pandemic despite reports that women have become more vulnerable to violence, harassment and trafficking. Gender-responsive approach needs to be fully integrated in the government’s COVID19 response. Functioning mechanisms for prevention, refuge and redress in the midst of health and safety protocols, flexible work arrangements, income diminution or job loss, home schooling, multiple burden, and increased living expenses, must be ensured.
ALU National Vice President and Women Chair Eva Arcos is asking the Department of Labor and Employment to enhance their monitoring mandate and disclose their inspection findings after 26 years since the Anti-Sexual Harassment Act was passed and after almost three years since RA 11313 or the Safe Spaces Act was approved. With its authority and infrastructures, the government is in a better position to identify the occupations, sectors or work arrangements in which workers and other persons are more exposed to gender-based violence; to describe the acts, extent, gravity and impact of, and the actual interventions in place to end sexual harassment in the world of work.
Arcos said that survivors of sexual harassment often struggle with victim-blaming, humiliation, retaliation, isolation, slow investigation and complaint resolution, and emotional or psychological scars, among many other things. Offenders often cry lack of observance of due process and non-observance of confidentiality. Arcos reminded that employers are required to disseminate and conduct anti-sexual harassment seminars, formulate code of conduct or workplace policy, and create an independent internal mechanism or a committee on decorum and investigation.
Labor unions ALU and BWI urged employers and workers to renew their commitment to industrial peace based on justice, respect of human rights and dignity of labor, and gender equality. They also called for the government’s ratification of ILO Convention 190 which is anchored on respect, promotion and realization of the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment.
