The TUCP also cautioned the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG Fund) against raising its mandatory contribution rates, saying this would unduly burden its 7.4 million member-workers.

CEBU, Philippines – The Central Visayas Regional Development Council encourages all regional line agencies to put up breastfeeding facilities for the convenience of working lactating mothers.

CEBU, Philippines – At least 11 workers groups and unions, which compose the Cebu Labor Coalition, will be filing today a petition seeking for a P126.60 across the board increase in the daily minimum wages of workers in Central Visayas before the regional office of the Regional Tripartite Wage Productivity Board.

THE Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) is getting behind the high-level mission sent by the International Labor Organization (ILO) to Manila to investigate widespread complaints of violations of the rights of Filipino workers to freely organize themselves. We are absolutely supportive of the mission. We are hopeful that their findings and recommendations will…

This is shoe disturbing: An investigation on toxins in flip-flops, sandals, clogs, and other plastic shoes in seven countries, including the Philippines, has unearthed scary concentrations of harmful chemicals that are injurious to human health and the environment.

MANILA, Philippines – The combined net earnings of companies listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange jumped 46.3 percent in the first half this year to P193.43 billion, indicating that major firms have recovered from the global financial crisis.

MANILA, Philippines – Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, the largest labor group in the country, rejected yesterday the proposal of the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG) to increase its membership contribution rate, saying the move would be an additional burden to the housing fund’s 7.4 million members.

MANILA, PHilippines – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will revive a technical working group (TWG) to review and regulate the advertisements of food supplements now flooding the Philippine market.

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang said yesterday private hospitals that will raise fees to cope with the cost of the implementation of the Cheaper Medicines Law could face sanctions.

Three days after he typecast the urban poor protesters as lazybones, the militant organized labor led by Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) yesterday turned the tables on Vice President Noli de Castro, branding him as an anti-poor bureaucrat “bootlicking for the Arroyo government” and vowed to campaign against him in the forthcoming elections.

A group called Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo among the doomsayers on the success of the automated elections next year after Melo admitted that Comelec expects 30 to 50 percent of polling precincts to remain using the manual system due to electricity problems.

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines – Paying heed to the complaints of farmers in Cagayan Valley about the low buying price of corn, the national government has increased its buying price and the volume to be bought from every farmer.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The jobs situation could worsen slightly over the coming few months, US President Barack Obama warned Sunday as he declined to spell out whether the world’s largest economy was out of recession.

MANILA, Philippines—What can go wrong with the P7.2 billion poll automation plan of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and are there means to prevent them?

THE SLIGHTLY POSITIVE GDP growth our economy achieved in the second quarter was primarily the result of government’s extraordinary efforts to spend our way out of the global economic downturn.

THE GOVERNMENT IS DOUBLING ITS subsidy for the National Food Authority in 2010 to P8 billion in an apparent move to avert a repeat of the rice crisis in 2008 as it continues its stimulus spending next year.

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Energy has finally formed the National Renewable Energy Board, a move seen to speed up the setting of mechanisms and incentives critical to the implementation of the renewable energy law.

MANILA, Philippines—While insisting on their religious and academic freedoms when it comes to implementing provisions of the new Magna Carta of Women, private Catholic schools are asking for more and bigger subsidies from the government.

LOS BAÑOS, LAGUNA—Noting earlier recommendations from the International Labor Organization that remain unheeded by companies, workers from Southern Tagalog called on the world body to spend more time interviewing them during its fact-finding mission.

The National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC) is moving heaven and earth to ensure compliance with environmental laws by creating a new squad that will run after, arrest and prosecute environmental violators.

The National Police Commission (Napolcom) has formally launched its manual for members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) to guide them on how to deal with children in conflict with the law (CICL) as spelled out in the the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act.

LOS BAÑOS, Laguna, Philippines – The country’s wooden pallet industry is booming. A pallet is a platform device that holds one or more cargo packages in a group. It allows a load to be transferred and stored as a unit.

MANILA, Philippines – For their invaluable contribution to the Philippine economy, the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) get little in return in times when they need it the most. Too often news of OFWs getting killed, wrongly imprisoned, being maltreated and other horrifying experiences they have to endure away from their loved ones. As in most…

MANILA, Philippines – Petron Corp. chairman Ramon Ang said the government should strengthen efforts to curb oil smuggling, claiming oil smugglers are now controlling 30 to 35 percent of the petroleum industry.

Generous incentives – fiscal and non-fiscal – await companies that would want to invest in renewable energy development under the Renewable Energy Law passed last year. This is so in consideration of the high investment requirement needed in putting up a renewable energy project.

MANILA, Philippines – The Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG) is planning to increase its membership contribution rate to further improve the agency’s financial capability and meet the demands of members for more loans and benefits.

MANILA, Philippines – A national teachers’ organization has opposed the Department of Education’s move to shorten class hours in public elementary schools in a bid to add more class shifts.

MANILA, Philippines – The booming business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country is expected to employ at least one million Filipinos by 2010, Malacañang said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines — The leadership of the House of Representatives will finalize the rules and procedures for the debates on the reproductive health bill so that voting could take place before the end of the 14th Congress, according to Majority Leader and Iloilo Representative Arthur Defensor.

Pundits are sounding the alarm of a likely rise in the ranks of the informal sector amid the economic crisis, as the slowdown leads to job cuts. The informal sector is a catch-all term for people who contribute to a country’s economic output, but whose contribution are not captured by official data.