DOLE to issue guidelines protecting teachers’ rights

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) will soon come out with guidelines that will protect the rights of teachers and other school personnel who might be adversely affected by the implementation of the K to 12 program.

“The guideline is meant to prevent to the extent possible the displacement of faculty and non-academic personnel… It also seeks to ensure the sustainability of private and public educational institutions,” Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said yesterday.

She said retrenchment should be the last and not the first recourse, adding that there should be fair and reasonable criteria in ascertaining who would be dismissed and who would be retained among employees.

She said the guidelines also set the principles relative to the hiring or movement of teaching and non-teaching personnel and clarify the salaries and compensation package.

It also enumerates social protection measures and assistance that the government shall provide to affected college teachers and non-teaching personnel.

Baldoz said the DOLE worked with the Technical Educations and Skills Development Authority, Department of Education and the Commission on Higher Education in drafting the guidelines.

The guidelines passed through 18 sectoral, tripartite and inter-agency meetings aside from regional consultations conducted by the DOLE, she said.

“We will disseminate as widely as possible the joint guidelines based on the implementation of the K-12 curriculum to clear the air on some very important issues surrounding the program,” she said.

Be creative

As this developed, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas urged officials of Catholic schools to be creative in dealing with the effects of the K to 12 program.

“The most pressing problem has to do with our Catholic educators – both academic and non-academic partners – who will have no students to attend to in the first year of higher education, for the first year of the implementation of K to 12, and then for the first two years, in the second year of the scheme’s implementation,” he said.

He advised school administrators against the retrenchment of school personnel who may be displaced with the implementation of the program.

He said turning away workers who have been loyal to their schools and the local Church is a “most unwelcome prospect.”

“Charity is a law for Catholic schools that takes precedence over all human law,” he said.
Villegas said school administrators should instead provide opportunities for the re-tooling and re-training of college instructors and professors to enable them to handle subjects in senior high school. –-Mayen Jaymalin (The Philippine Star) with Eva Visperas