ECOP spearheads 32nd National Conference of Employers

Year 2011 is fraught with immense challenges to the Aquino administration amid developments unfolding in the global landscape and the industrial relations area. Employers, for their part, are hounded by various issues that pose challenges to Philippine businesses. Some of the major concerns of employers are job creation, labor law reforms and greening businesses.

The Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) supports the government in its thrust of promoting public-private partnership. ECOP believes that such partnership among various stakeholders shall translate into economic growth that will have a trickle-down effect on the common people.

These issues and challenges shall be discussed during the 32nd National Conference of Employers (NCE32), an annual undertaking by ECOP, to be held on 4-5 May 2011 at the Marriott Hotel at Newport, Pasay City. The Conference theme is “Tripartism and Employment: The Way Forward,” NCE 32 is chaired by Jesus B. Varela.

Among the topics of the COnference plenary sessions are “Sustaining Growth and Employment,” “Growth Through Labor Market Reforms,” “Emerging Global Best Practices,” and “Business Development and Bureaucracy.”

Every year, ECOP convenes its constituency through the National conference of Employers to come up with concrete and comprehensive position on matters of national importance that affect employers, its relation with its social partners and the business environment in general.

For more information about NCE32, please call tel.nos. 8904847, 8965006 or 8975295. For inquiries on sponsorships, please feel free to get in touch with Ms. Josie (loc.108). For inquiries on participation, you may call Ms. Lani (loc.112).

2011 KAPATID Awards

The Kapatiran sa Industriya or KAPATID Awards, is a recognition activity conducted every two years and coincides with the staging of the National Conference of Employers. It was launched in 1995 based on a concept developed by then ECOP President and now ECOP Chairman Miguel B. Varela. Initially, the KAPATID Awards recognize the fruitful and beneficial outcome of good and harmonious relationship, through partnership, of management and workers. Over the years, the KAPATID Awards evolved into a comprehensive search for best workplace policies and programs highlighted by industrial peace and harmony and characterized by quality and productivity, social accountability, and strategic visioning.

With the vision of commending enterprises with sound and harmonious management and worker relationship, companies’ practices are judged based on the characterization of enterprise level cooperation for better labor relations; product and service quality and improved productivity; enhanced relationship with workers, their families, and the society; and the ability of the enterprise to foresee future economic and socio-political changes through long-term planning and sustainability. The selection of winners is based on the four main criteria:
-Industrial Peace and Harmony
– Productivity and Quality
– Social Accoutability
– Strategic Visioning and Partnering for Business and Job Survival

The KAPATID Awards grew from its modest beginnings in 1995 to its prominent stature today, having recognized companies such as Phillips Group of Compa ies (1995 Grand KAPATID Awardee), National Steel Corporation (1997), Central Azucarera Don Pedro (1999), Yazaki-Torres Manufacturing, Inc. (2001), Indo Phil Group of Companies (2003), Meralco (2005), United Laboratories (2007), and St. Luke’s Medical Center (2009).

For this year, the KAPATID Awards Executuve Committee is chaired by laywer Rene Y. Soriano who is ECOP Honorary PResident. The search has become more purposive and systematic as the Executive Committee, which conducts the Executive Screening of all nominees, have been divided to represent each criteria, and carefully scrutinize the policies and programs of the companies.

The KAPATID Board of Judges is composed of experts in their respective fields, and came from different sectors of society particularly in business and management, government, organized labor, and the international community. The panel of judges is composed of:
1. Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz
Department of Labor and Employment
2. Mr. Lawrenece Jeffrey Johnson
Director, ILO-Manila Country Office
3. Dean Jorge Sibal
UP-SOLAIR
4. Mr. Antonio Asper
Federation of Free workers
5. Mr. David Balangue

Grave Concern Over Wage Hike Bills

Foremost among the issues which employers are closely keeping track of and have to be vigilant because of their grave repercussions are the legislated wage hike proposal and security of tenure bills.

ECOP stands pat on its strong opposition to a legislated wage adjustment being pursued in Congress by party-list representatives.

ECOP has voiced grace concern to lawmakers during the public hearing over the “disastrous” impact on business and labor of a legislated {125 across-the-board wage increase for private sector workers – as opposed under HOuse Bill No. (HB) 375.

“With this massive across-the-board daily wage increase which is not productivity-based, cost of production of goods and services would rocket sky-high. Enterprises could not just simply pass on the increased cost of goods to the market primarily because of the competition offered by low-cost imports and smuggled goods,” ECOP warned.

“In the process, companies which are unable to recover the increased cost of production would have no other choice but either to retrench or worse, close shop, or simply go underground, rather than risk severe penal sanctions,” ECOP pointed out.

ECOP stressed that the biggest casualty of such magnitude of legislated wake hike would be micro and small establishments. Latest data available indicate that micro and small establishments employ 3,596,110 wage and salary workers or 63% of the total number of 5,691,110 wage employment in the formal sector. From, 1991 after the Asian financial crisis up to 2009, micro and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) lost more than 46,000 enterprises and over 558,000 jobs. Using the labor cost methodology of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) statistics, total labor cost of the P125 pay adjustment to micro and SMEs would reach a staggering amount of over P188 billion and oer P109 billion to large enterprises. “Unquestionably, micro and small establishments will be the first ones to fall, considering that most of them could even barely cope with the periodic wage increases granted by the regional wage boards,” ECOP argued.

At the same time, ECOP noted that the proposed pay adjustment via legislation would undermine unionism and collective bargaining. It cited that the P125 across-the-board daily wage increase is equivalent to 31% if the highest prevailing minimum wage of P404 a day. But the increase, though, is not limited to the minimum but is multiplied across-the-board. In effect, this would also render the functions of the regional wage boards inutile as the various wage boards are mandated under Republic Act 6727, otherwise known as the Wage Rationalization Act, to set wages per region,sector or industry.

In addition, ECOP said a legislated wage increase would aggravate the discrimination and inequity between the protected sector and the rest of the labor force in as much as only 15% of wage and salary workers in the formal sector stand to benefit.

Security of Tenure Bills Assailed

The country’s policy-makers and lawmakers should pave the way for a new paradigm that is completely relevant to global trends on contracting particularly the emergence of business process outsourcing. This should be coupled with the flexibility needed by the country to compete and capture a substantial share of the huge global outsourcing market.

This is the position of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) vis-a-vis security of tenure bills pending deliberations befor the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resource Development chaired by Sen. Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada.

Senate Bill No. (SB) 171 authored by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, SB 672 by Estrada, SB 858 by Estrada, and SB 2662 by Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri contain provisions that seek to suppress if not outlaw job contracting and outsourcing as well as others that would guarantee perpetual employment in favor of a limited number of wage and salary workers employed by establishments in the formal sector purportedly to ensure that their constitutional right to security of tenure is protected.

These provisions are unique. “Nowhere in the market economies of this region, including communist ruled China and Vietnam, among two of the fastest growing economies in the world, are there such arbitrary measures that would outlaw job contracting and coerce enterprises on pain of penal sanctions, skilled or unskilled regardless of the need for their services,” ECOP President Edgardo G. Lacson pointed out.

The aforementioned bills to seek to prohibit or outlaw with civil and/or penal sanctions:
– contracting our work essential or inherent to the nature of business of the employer; the employee must directly hire workers performing activities usually or desirable to its usual trade or business
– engaging or maintaining by the principal of subcontracted employees in excess of ten percent of the principal’s total workforce
– contracting out work which results in termination of regular employees, reduction of work hours, or reduction or splitting of bargaining unit
– contracting out work being performed or previously performed by regular employeers and/or member sof collective bargaining unit
– contracting out services being performed by members of collective bargaining unit and/or regular rank-and-file and supervisory employees
– contracting out work to an in-house agency owned, managed or controlled by the principal or which operates solely for the principal

Furthermore, said proposed measures compell all enterprises on pain of penal sanctions to comply with the following prescriptions:

– provide permanent employment for all types of workers, skilled or unskilled, regardless of the need for their services, whether temporary, casual, contractual or fixed term (SB171)
– transform seasona, project and casual employment into regular employment which cannot be terminated except for just or authorized causes (CB2622)
– maintain ratio of employees contracted for a definite period to not more than 30 percent of the total number of rank and file employees

Lacson noted that the bills fail to take into account that contracting out is not limited to the traditional form of servicr contracting performed within the establishment of the principal (such as security, janitorial, messengerial) but includes higer value-added outsourcing carried out by independent contractors in their own plants or establishments involving such varied operations as manufacturing on one hand and business functions and processes on the other.

Lacson zeroed in, for instance, on BPOs, with their enermous potential to create wealth and jobs in a labor-surplus economy. In this regard, Lacson said legislative policy should provide for a regulatory environment that would provide optimum flexibility for outsourcing to grow and compete rather than imposing onerous prescriptions and proscriptions that could dangerously impact on the industry with disastrous consequences to the economy.

At the same time, Lacson pointed out that contracting is not limited to formal enterprises, but also between formal sector enterprises and subcontracted industrial homeworkers.

“The prescriptions and proscriptions on contracting in the bills would cause the unemployment of millions of homeworkers and inflict upon their households untold suffering and misery. Undoubtedly, they would increase the incidence of extreme poverty,” Lacson warned.–Daily Tribune