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“RAISING THE BAR OF SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP IN AN INTEGRATING ASEAN” 

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is celebrating this year 50 years of partnership building between and among the ten ASEAN Member States. This partnership building has made the region into one of the most stable and peaceful in the world. It has also spurred rapid intra-regional growth. As an economic bloc, ASEAN is now considered the world’s 7th largest economy and has become the fulcrum for economic cooperation in the Asia Pacific.

Aptly, the ASEAN, in marking its 50th year, has adopted the theme “Partnering for Change, Engaging the World”. ASEAN has steadfastly held on to its vision of one ASEAN Community – One ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), One ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC), One ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC) – all aimed at realizing one caring and sharing society.

Critical in partnership building is the promotion of people-centered ASEAN community programs, which have received special attention from the ASEAN in the last one and a half decades. Thus, recent ASEAN declarations have been focusing on people’s issues such as social protection, gender equality, migration, health and safety, poverty, inequality and sustainable development.

The tripartite participants representing the Government, Labor and Employers’ sectors from the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Republic of Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, the Republic of the Philippines, the Kingdom of Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, gathered in Manila on 18-19 October 2017 for the 8th ASEAN Regional Tripartite Social Dialogue Conference with the theme “Raising the Bar of Social Partnership in an Integrating ASEAN” organized under Philippine chairmanship, on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The Manila Tripartite Joint Statement Towards Strengthening Social Partnership in an Integrating ASEAN recognizes the fifty (50) years of significant and dynamic collaboration in ASEAN, observing that good practices in Industrial Relations and Labor Administration are one of the ultimate goals of ASEAN in which basic rights of both employers and workers are protected and promoted, acknowledging that the organized representatives of the tripartite actors in the ASEAN such as the ASEAN Labor Ministers Meeting (ALMM) and the Senior Labor Officials Meeting (SLOM), the ASEAN Confederation of Employers (ACE), and the ASEAN Service Employees Trade Union Council (ASETUC) have undertaken an increasing number of programs supportive of good industrial practices, in particular the promotion of the concept of “social partnership” between employer and labor in order to achieve lasting harmony, higher productivity, better welfare for both sides and sustainable competitiveness in an integrating ASEAN, emphasizing that the practice of Partnership in Industrial Relations should be deepened and promoted more widely. This Manila Tripartite Joint Statement was agreed, expressed and adopted on 19 October 2017 in Manila Philippines.