146 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy of the first groups to stage protests during Martial law was a labor union that engaged in a strike in an alcoholic beverage firm. However, due to factors that include increasing capital mobility and global economic competition, a contracting manufacturing sector, the shift of the work force to services, labor only contracting and the measures taken by corporations to prevent unionization (Aganon, Serrano and Certeza, 2009), in the guise of securing industrial peace, labor unionism has declined as shown in Table 3. The total number of union members in June 2010 (1.7 million) is less than half of the peak number of union members in the year 2000 when there were more than 3.7 million union members. Table 3. Existing Workers' Associations, Collective Bargaining Agreements. 2008-June 2010