Grantee: BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN)
Partner organizations: N/A
Country of focus: Philippine
Grant period: November 2025 – April 2027
FutureWORKS Asia is part of a global initiative supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, aimed at addressing the evolving challenges in the world of work across the Global South. As the Asian arm of the broader FutureWORKS network, the initiative is led by LIRNEasia and focuses on supporting high-quality, innovative, and gender-responsive research to inform skills development and policy pathways for an inclusive and sustainable future of work in Asia.
Following the completion of the first competitive selection process, five research projects under Cycle 1 are currently ongoing. In November 2025, FutureWORKS Asia onboarded seven additional research projects under Cycle 2, expanding the regional research network. These Cycle 2 projects will run until April 2027, deepening evidence and policy engagement across diverse future-of-work themes, including climate transitions, gender, and labour market transformation.
BIEN has been selected to conduct a 18 month research and advocacy project, Pathways to collective power: testing models for organizing business process outsourcing (BPO) workers in the Philippine digital labor sector.
The Philippine BPO sector employs over 1.8 million workers and is a key driver of economic growth, yet it remains marked by high stress, low wages, intense monitoring, and limited avenues for collective voice. Union density in the sector is extremely low, shaped by workplace surveillance, fear of retaliation, high labour turnover, and limited familiarity with organising.
This project seeks to identify practical, effective pathways for collective organisation in the BPO industry by testing and comparing three distinct organising models:
- a Labour–Management Committee focused on social dialogue,
- a department-level union testing formal collective bargaining, and
- an informal, account-based worker collective designed to offer flexible and lower-risk participation.
Through participatory, action-oriented research, the project will document what works, for whom, and under what conditions. The findings will inform policy recommendations, organising strategies, and tools that strengthen labour rights and worker representation in the Philippine digital labour economy.
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Research objectives
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Methodology
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Grantee information
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Research team
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Publications
The overarching objective of this project is to test and evaluate three distinct organising strategies in the Philippine BPO sector to assess their effectiveness in strengthening collective representation and advancing labour rights for digital service workers.
Specifically, the project aims to:
- Document and analyse the processes, outcomes, and lived experiences associated with each organising model—Labour–Management Councils, formal unions, and informal worker collectives.
- Identify the enabling and constraining workplace, sectoral, and institutional factors that shape workers’ ability to organise through formal and informal mechanisms.
- Assess how different organising strategies influence workers’ access to living wages, workplace safety and health, autonomy, benefits, and meaningful representation.
- Compare the sustainability, inclusiveness, and impact of each organising approach in promoting decent work and protecting worker rights.
- Translate research findings into practical recommendations for policy and practice, informing labour regulations, sector-specific protections, and institutional mechanisms aligned with the ILO Decent Work pillars and the proposed Magna Carta for BPO Workers.
Guided by these objectives, the research addresses key questions on how organising can move beyond being perceived as a risk or disruption, and instead be recognised as a legitimate, democratic pathway for improving working conditions and labour relations in the digital services sector.
The project adopts a mixed-methods, participatory action research design to test and compare three worker organising strategies in the Philippine BPO sector: Labour–Management Councils (LMCs), formal unions, and informal worker collectives. The methodology is grounded in the ILO Decent Work Agenda and BIEN’s draft Magna Carta for BPO Workers, ensuring that findings are assessed against internationally recognised labour standards and sector-specific rights claims.
The research begins with a baseline assessment across three selected BPO sites, chosen based on workforce diversity, openness to engagement, and strategic relevance. Baseline surveys and interviews will map worker profiles, concerns, and attitudes across key dimensions such as wages, workplace safety and health, autonomy, benefits, and the right to organise.
Each site will then implement one pilot organising intervention, corresponding to a different organising model. One site will test an LMC approach focused on social dialogue and participation; another will support the formation of a formal union to assess collective bargaining and institutional sustainability; and a third will develop an informal worker collective designed to provide flexibility and protection for marginalised workers, including women, LGBTQ+ workers, and night-shift employees.
Throughout implementation, the project will conduct ongoing monitoring and process documentation. An impact assessment will compare outcomes across the three organising models using baseline and endline data, focusing on worker participation, empowerment, rights protection, and employer responses.
The BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN) is a national labour association of call centre and business process outsourcing (BPO) workers in the Philippines. BIEN works to advance living wages, safe and dignified working conditions, and democratic labour rights in the digital services sector. Through worker education, grassroots organising, participatory research, and advocacy, BIEN empowers BPO workers—particularly women, night-shift workers, and LGBTQ+ employees—to collectively challenge precarity, surveillance, and exclusion in the workplace.
BIEN has an established track record of worker-led research and advocacy on wages, occupational safety and health, gender inequality, automation, and the right to organise. Its work bridges lived worker experiences with policy engagement at national and international levels.
- Mylene Cabalona (Project Lead)
Provides overall strategic leadership and leads engagement with policymakers and international labour institutions.
- Roxanne Gale Villaflor (Lead Researcher)
Expert in Labour Feminist Participatory Action Research, Anthropology, Indigenous People’s Rights
- Rodinie Soriano (National Coordinator)
Expert in Digital Workers Rights, Labor Organizing
- Lean Porquia (Gender, Equity and Inclusion Advisor)
Expert in Labor, Gender and Human Rights; Campaign and Public Speaking
- Denzel Bajala (Communications Officer)
Leads dissemination, media engagement, and translation of research findings into accessible public-facing content.
This project is one of the twelve projects selected under the FutureWORKS Asia, a research initiative funded by IDRC and led by LIRNEasia, a pro-poor, pro-market think tank specializing in digital infrastructure and policy research. LIRNEasia’s work focuses on leveraging digital technology to enhance knowledge, information access, and economic opportunities, particularly for underserved communities.
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