INQUIRER Global Nation

MANILA, Philippines -- It was a group that went against two Korean firms to fight for workers’ rights, but it ended up being given South Korea’s most prestigious human rights award.

There really was no contradiction there, said Fr. Jose Dizon, executive director of the Workers’ Assistance Center Inc. (WAC), the church-based group that bagged the prestigious award this year.

In fact, Dizon said, the Koreans were even “ashamed and apologetic” to the Filipino awardees for what they had to go through in the hands of some “oppressive Korean nationals” in the Philippines.

Dizon, who received the Tji Hak-soon Justice and Peace Award in Seoul, South Korea on behalf of the WAC last March 10, said that the award acknowledged WAC’s 12 years of commitment to the causes of factory laborers in Cavite.

The human rights award is given to institutions who continue to work for justice and peace amid repressive circumstances, said Dizon. The WAC is the first Filipino group to receive the award.

The WAC was launched in 1995 as a socio-pastoral program of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Rosario, Cavite in response to a research study that showed that a number of workers at the Cavite Export Processing Zone (CEPZ) were denied their basic right to organize.

Dizon said about half of the 300 factories that set up shop at the CEPZ are Korean-owned.

The Korean business owners, at the time of the organization of the WAC, he added, had become notorious for being “harsh, repressive and profit-oriented” to the detriment of their Filipino employees.

In 2006, Dizon said, amid an unwritten ‘no union, no strike’ policy, the WAC assisted the CEPZ workers to form a union and submit a collective bargaining agreement proposal to their employers.

Two Korean firms -- Chong Won Fashion Inc. and Phils. Jeon Garment Inc. -- had refused to bargain which gave the workers a cause to call for a strike.

The labor case against Phils. Jeon reached the Supreme Court and was eventually decided in favor of the workers. The Korean employers, however, allegedly still have to implement the ruling.

The management of Chong Won, on the other hand, has a pending petition for voluntary insolvency at the Imus Regional Trial Court and has closed down.

The Tji Hak-soon Justice and Peace Award in Seoul was given in honor of the late Korean Catholic Bishop Daniel Tji Hak-soon of Wonju, South Korea.

Bishop Tji, Dizon said, was jailed in 1974 for his involvement with dissident student activists in fighting against the repression of workers’ rights.

Bishop Tji was the leading spokesperson for the Korean Catholic Church against the former military rulers of South Korea until his death in March 1993.

Dizon said the Koreans had recognized the WAC efforts to uphold labor’s rights because they also have their own history of repression of workers.

“They were ashamed of their own nationals because they have forgotten their own history of fighting workers’ repression. The Koreans here had misrepresented the goodness of their people due to profit,” said Dizon.

He said the Koreans were so apologetic over the repressive Korean factory owners in Cavite that they asked the WAC to file a complaint with the Korean Ministry of Trade and Justice.