Benjamin B. Velasco is the Graduate Studies Program coordinator and an Assistant Professor 7 at the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He has a master’s degree in industrial relations and is currently completing his dissertation on improving the conditions of women garment workers through worker-driven social responsibility. Asst. Prof. Velasco is a recipient of the One UP Faculty Grant for Research and Public Service for 2025-2027. His research has been published in local and international journals, book chapters and gray literature. He has also co-edited books on alternative regionalism in Southeast Asia. One of his recent papers—on the limits and possibilities of just transition for informal jeepney workers—has been translated into Portugese. Asst. Prof. Velasco speaks in public events, writes in the mass media and is quoted by labor reporters on contemporary employment relations issues. He was formerly co-convenor of the Alternative Development Program of the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies and director of SOLAIR’s Center for Labor and Grassroots Initiative. Before entering the academe, he was engaged for almost 30 years as a labor educator, writer and researcher.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

• Velasco, B. B. (2026). The challenge of just transition for single-use plastic workers in the Philippines. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 1–20.
  
  

• Velasco, B. (2026). Revisiting Models of Economic Development in the Philippines in Light of the Pandemic. In: Nawawi, Alami, A.N., Bautista, J., Aung-Thwin, M., Simandjuntak, D., Prasetyo, Y.E. (eds) Managing Disruption and Developing Resilience for a Better Southeast Asia. SEASIA 2022. Springer Proceedings in Humanities and Social Sciences, pp 45–56. Springer, Singapore. 

• Velasco, B. (2026). An Epidemic of Human Rights Violations: The Authoritarian Response to COVID-19 in Duterte’s Philippines. In: Nawawi, Alami, A.N., Bautista, J., Aung-Thwin, M., Simandjuntak, D., Prasetyo, Y.E. (eds) Managing Disruption and Developing Resilience for a Better Southeast Asia. SEASIA 2022. Springer Proceedings in Humanities and Social Sciences, pp. 885–895. Springer, Singapore. 

• Velasco, B.B. & Pineda-Ofreneo, R. (2025). Digitalization, COVID-19, and the Future of Women Workers in the Philippines. Philippine Journal of Social Development 18, 104–129. 

• Velasco, B. (2025). Constrangimentos para uma transição justa no programa de modernização dos “jeepney”. RBEST Revista Brasileira De Economia Social E Do Trabalho, 7(00), e025012. 

• Velasco, B. B. (2025). Worker-driven social responsibility as an alternative: Interrogating export zone workers’ struggles in the Philippines. In J. M. C. Sy & A. P. Aban (Eds.), Reimagining development in Southeast Asia (Vol. 21, pp. 345-363). Springer.

• Velasco, B.B. (2024). Constraints and Potentials for Just Transition in the Jeepney Modernization Program. Philippine Journal of Social Development 17(1): 77-102. 

• Velasco, B.B. (2023). Using Marx to Understand the Working Class in the Philippines. Philippine Journal of Public Policy: Interdisciplinary Development Perspectives 2023: 1-33. 

• Velasco, B.B. (2022). Social Movements as Enablers of Transformative Social Protection and Building Back Better: A Case Study of the Nagkaisa Labor Coalition’s COVID Advocacy. Philippine Journal of Social Development 15: 165-180. 

• Velasco, B.B. (2022). Dynamics of Union Organizing in Three Garment Factories in the Cavite Ecozone. Philippine Journal of Labor and Industrial Relations 39: 121-157. 

• Velasco, B.B. (2020). Workers’ Fighting Mood and the Cycle of Labor Conflict at Philippine Airlines from 2009 to 2019. Philippine Journal of Labor and Industrial Relations 37: 296-325.