Short answer. Assistance on any matter arising out of your employment, and it does not have to be requested from Manila first. The Labor Code directs labour attaches and consular officials to help Filipino workers in their jurisdiction and to see that they are not exploited or discriminated against.
What the law says
To provide all Filipino workers within their jurisdiction assistance on all matters arising out of employment
Labor Code, Article 21 — Duties Of Foreign Service Officers. Read the full provision →
What the law says
even without prior instruction or advice from the home office
Labor Code, Article 21 — Duties Of Foreign Service Officers. Read the full provision →
The mandate is broad and it is theirs to exercise
The duty is to provide assistance on all matters arising out of employment — not assistance with a listed set of complaints, and not assistance only where a case has already been filed. Unpaid or short-paid wages, a contract that turns out to differ from the one you signed, confiscated documents, hours or conditions that were never agreed, being kept in a house you cannot leave: each of these arises out of the employment, and each falls inside the wording. The article also puts the duty on Philippine diplomatic and consular officials alongside the labour attache, so a post without a dedicated attache is not a post without an obligation.
They do not need permission from Manila
One clause matters more than the rest when you are the one in trouble: the officials named are to act even without prior instruction or advice from the home office. A worker who is told that nothing can be done until instructions arrive from the Philippines is being given an answer the Code does not support. The provision was written precisely so that distance and the working day in two time zones would not be a reason to wait. It is a fair thing to say, calmly, when you are asking for help.
Protection against exploitation is a separate stated duty
The article separately obliges them to insure that Filipino workers are not exploited or discriminated against. That is worth noticing because it is not framed as reacting to a complaint. It is a standing duty to see to a condition, which is why raising a pattern affecting several workers at one employer is within the mandate even if only one of you is willing to be named. Discrimination as against local staff — different pay, different rest, different treatment for the same work — sits inside this clause and not merely inside your contract.
What to bring, and what the article cannot do
Be plain about the limits. This provision creates duties of assistance; it does not itself give the post power over a foreign employer or over the courts of the host country, and it fixes no timetable. What makes assistance effective is documentary: the contract you actually signed, your payslips or the absence of them, your passport or a record of who holds it, dates, and the names of the people involved. Keep copies somewhere the employer cannot reach. If the matter later has to be pursued in the Philippines against the agency that deployed you, that same record is what the case is built on.