Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz has encouraged young people , including students and fresh graduates, to take a closer look at in-demand occupations, and develop the corresponding skills to avail of these job opportunities found in the country’s major and emerging industries.

BALANCING ACT: The plan to raise the fare in the light rail transit lines in Metro Manila is a tough balancing act for the Aquino administration seeking to cut losses without overburdening an estimated 750,000 daily commuters.

MANILA, Philippines – Seven in 10 Filipinos believe the results of the May 10 national elections are more credible than those of previous elections, a recent non-commissioned survey by polling firm Pulse Asia showed.     

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang declared yesterday that all midnight appointees of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo must immediately vacate their offices pending the resolution of petitions filed against the implementation of Executive Order 2 revoking the appointments made during the prohibited period.

Besides their main labor complaints on early retirement age, more work and less pay, Philippine Airlines’ (PAL) flight attendants have another issue to raise: shorter breaktimes during domestic flights.

New Delhi, July 29 (IBNS) — Unfazed by the global economic slowdown, the Top 20 Indian BPO firms grew their combined exports earnings by 15%, in the just concluded fiscal 2009-10, to touch revenues of $6.1 billion, according to The Dataquest Top 20 annual industry survey conducted by CyberMedia.

The rounds for minimum-wage adjustments have begun, with Metro Manila, Davao, Western Visayas, North Cotabato, Caraga and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao reportedly approaching agreements to set the minimum wage in their areas at more or less P25 higher than the current minimum. As this goes on, the National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC)…

AGE IS JUST a number, so goes an advertisement for a food supplement directed at senior citizens. Try telling that to the flight attendants of Philippine Airlines who, under their collective bargaining agreement, have to retire when they reach 40. And be ready to get a severe tongue lashing.

I can understand it when the average person—the proverbial man on the street—raises his hackles over the fact that some government appointee is receiving millions of pesos in annual compensation. A couple of million pesos is probably a mind-boggling amount for someone who doesn’t know when his family’s next meal is coming from. It would…

PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino III plans to abolish at least two government-owned or -controlled corporations to slash next year’s budget by more than P100 billion.

SINGAPORE (Xinhua) — Latest results published by the Global YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) Global Pulse Survey showed that business confidence in Asia is on the rise, local media reported on Wednesday.

MANILA, Philippines—Unions in Hacienda Luisita, once united in their plea for better working conditions despite threats of violence, are divided in the face of pressures brought about by a compromise settlement with the estate management.

Multinational corporations have located shared services facilities in the Philippines for three reasons, according to a recent study conducted by the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) and Hewitt Associates. The number one reason is the talent profile, as survey after survey on the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry tells us. People are at…

President Aquino said his governance will be characterized by a new paradigm. This is now evident in his work style – not wanting to have his name placed on government projects and adopting a team approach in management. We also note his careful management of limited resources such as scheduling a few foreign travels. As…

The Commission on Audit (CoA) on Tuesday declared that it will enforce a decision directing officials of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) to refund the government a total P8,762,948.31 in financial benefits they distributed to employees and to themselves some ten years ago.

The Philippines has also adopted tax incentives for the environment along with other objectives, such as aiding the health and education sector, promotion of culture, sports and arts, as well as incentives for social welfare.

A Filipino publishing firm operating in the United States has been banned by the US Labor department from hiring temporary workers after it admitted committing violations of labor law.

FOLLOWING its zero-based budgeting approach in next year’s proposed budget, the Aquino administration is considering the “possible deactivation” of nonperforming government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) and irrelevant task forces under the Office of the President (OP).

THE COUNTRY’S outsourcing services for health care information management will increasingly rely on other fields for growth besides medical transcription, which has been the focus of this segment of business process outsourcing (BPO) for the past 10 years, an industry official told reporters yesterday.

CAR PARTS makers want the Board of Investments (BoI) to retain provisions establishing an industry development fund as the agency moves to review and possibly revise a new incentive package for the automotive industry.

OFFICIALS of the Philippine Airlines (PAL) on Tuesday appealed to the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines (Fasap) to spare the public from the inconvenience of its planned strike.

MANILA, Philippines—Overseas Filipino workers and their recruiters alike are up in arms over the compulsory six-month contribution OFWs are now forced to make to the Home Development Mutual (Pag-IBIG) Fund even before they could leave to start work abroad.

MANILA, Philippines—Schoolchildren in 48,000 state-run daycare centers across the country will have daily hot porridge of surplus rice from the National Food Authority, NFA administrator Lito Banayo said Tuesday.

Sales abroad of Philippine-assembled electronics products grew at their fastest pace on record, as the country’s overall exports continued to expand by double-digits in June. In a statement, the National Statistics Office (NSO) reported that the country’s merchandise trade shipments abroad increased 33.4 percent to $4.545 billion from $3.407 billion in June last year.

MANILA, Philippines – Merchandise exports continued to post double-digit growth in June, although slower than the previous month’s rise.

MANILA, Philippines – A quarter of young Metro Manila residents say they cannot live without their mobile phones, according to a new survey.

MANILA, Philippines – Farmers and fishermen are expected to become the most in demand workers in the country in the next 10 years.

MANILA, Philippines – Seven in 10 Filipino students suffer from different forms of violence in schools, a recent study done by a private institution showed.

FOR ALMOST two decades now, doomsayers have been declaring that manufacturing is a dying sector in the Philippines and that we will soon be reduced to a trading economy. Various reasons are cited for this dire prediction. Prominent among them is the emergence of China as the now widely acknowledged “factory of the world.” This…

WASHINGTON—Even modest rises in global temperatures will drive down rice production in Asia, the world’s biggest grower of the cereal grain that millions of poor people depend on as a staple food, a study published Monday warned.