Degrading nurses

THE Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) opposes Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara’s bill proposing to peg at only P14,000 the minimum monthly pay for nurse practitioners.

The Angara bill actually seeks to demote our nurses, who, based on existing law, are already entitled to a starting monthly salary of P22,000.

If Congressman Sonny Angara wishes to follow the footsteps of his father and become senator someday, he should promptly withdraw his bill, which degrades our nurses. There is no way he can get the votes of our three million registered nurses and nursing graduates, if he insists on his bill.

Angara, a member of the House panel prosecuting the impeachment case against Chief Justice Renato Corona, is the son of Sen. Edgardo Angara, whose two consecutive terms in the Senate expires next year.

Under the Nursing Law of 2002, or Republic Act 9173, the floor pay of public nurses is already pegged at Salary Grade 15, which he said corresponds to a monthly rate of at least P22,688.

The only reason the higher pay rate is not being enforced by public hospitals is because government claims it does not have the wherewithal.

Private sector nurses would remain underpaid as long as government itself pays them poorly.

Even the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. led by president Dr. Eduardo Banzon is already paying nurses P15,000 monthly, which is higher than the salary being offered by Angara.

The government must seek new foreign labor markets and the creation of local employment programs for the growing number of jobless nurses.

Substandard schools must be shut down as they have been defrauding nursing students and their parents through costly yet deficient instruction.

Nurses are now the nation’s second-largest group of professionals after teachers.

The country’s large oversupply of nurses has contributed to the downward pressure on their wages, according to labor market analysts.

The Professional Regulation Commission estimates at 300,000 the unemployed nurses. Educators, labor leaders and even health officials have been urging incoming college students to avoid taking up nursing, amid the huge surplus of graduates.

BPO industry seen to generate 126,000 new jobs this year.

Despite a US anti-outsourcing bill, the second largest American bank in deposits, home mortgage servicing and debit cards—Wells Fargo and Co.—has started to relegate some of its non-core, business support activities to the Philippines.

We in the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) welcome Wells Fargo’s launch of an in-house business support center in Manila, following the footsteps of JP.

Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc..

We are counting on Wells Fargo’s new center to help provide gainful employment to our college-educated, fluent English-speaking professionals, many of whom remain idle.

The establishment of Wells Fargo Philippines Solutions Inc. has reinforced Manila’s reputation as an exceptional global hub for labor-intensive and information technology-enabled outsourcing services.

Under its new leadership, TUCP’s new members include VOICE, a labor federation of contact center employees.

The country’s booming business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, which fully employs some 630,000 Filipinos, produced $11 billion in revenues in 2011.

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines sees industry revenues jumping 18 percent to $13 billion this year.

Based on the projected incremental revenues of $2 billion, the industry could create around 126,000 new jobs this year.

Wells Fargo’s new Philippine center deals with a variety of functions, including customer service and back office support.

The American bank’s decision to shift more jobs offshore comes amid worries in the Philippines over a US anti-outsourcing bill.

The proposed US Call Center and Consumer Protection Act, introduced by New York Rep. Tim Bishop, would require the US Department of Labor to track firms that shift contact center jobs overseas.

The firms would then be ineligible for any direct or indirect US federal loans or loan guarantees for five years. The bill would also require contact center staff to disclose their location to US consumers, who would be given the right to be routed to a US-based call hub upon request.

Frankly, I do not expect the US Congress to pass the bill, which is being opposed by American corporations that are benefitting from outsourcing.

Founded in 1929, San Francisco, California-based Wells Fargo is one of the so-called Big Four U.S. banks regarded as “too big to fail” at the height of the 2008 global financial crisis. The three others are Bank of America Corp., Citigroup, and JP Morgan.

JP Morgan and Citigroup have long-existing in-house back offices in Manila through JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A. Philippine Customer Care Center and Citigroup Business Process Solutions Pte. Ltd.

Although Bank of America does not yet have in-house back offices here, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender is known to have outsourced some of its customer support activities to an independent BPO provider with extensive Philippine operations.

Wells Fargo is emerging from the financial crisis with a bigger franchise, after it acquired rival banking giant Wachovia Corp., which had been weakened by mounting bad loans.

A highly diversified financial services company with over 80 different business lines, Wells Fargo has 6,335 branches, 12,094 ATMs, 70 million customers, and 264,000 employees. –ERNESTO F. HERRERA, Manila Times

ernestboyherrera@yahoo.com