American employer faces TUCP’s ire

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines said in a press release yesterday that Laurence Kevin Fishman, the American businessman who deserted and defrauded his Filipino employees of some P50 million in wages, should be forever banned from re-entering the Philippines.

The TUCP urged the Bureau of Immigration to immediately tag and blacklist Fishman as “an undesirable alien.”

Fishman hastily left the country without notice on Aug. 25 and abandoned his firm, Sta. Mesa, Manila-based Skytech International Dental Laboratories Inc., leaving his 416 workers with unpaid salaries and separation benefits, the press release said.

The government should find ways to run after Fishman and compel him to settle his unpaid obligations to his workers, TUCP secretary-general and former Senator Ernesto Herrera said in the press release.

Herrera said that “While we welcome foreign investors who build factories here that create badly needed jobs, the government should not take lightly any violations of our labor laws and abuses against our workers.”

Regulators should ban all products of Skytech’s parent firm, Trident Dental Laboratories, from entering the country, he added. He also urged the Philippine Dental Association to boycott Trident products.

Before it closed shop, Skytech fabricated artificial teeth and associated parts for dental clinics and other overseas clients. Herrera said Skytech’s parent firm, Hawthorne, California-based Trident Labs Inc., doing business as Trident Dental Laboratories, and with facilities in China and Vietnam, “appears to remain fully operational.”

Trident’s website is still running, and Fishman is still there as “CEO/owner,” with his welcome message to prospective clients and customers, Herrera said. The Department of Labor and Employment is trying to help the displaced Skytech workers, the press release said.* –Daily Visayan Star