MANILA, Philippines – The non-performing loan (NPL) ratio of universal and commercial banks rose slightly to 3.49 percent in July from the previous month’s 3.36 percent, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.

It is illegal to discipline (much less dismiss) an employee on the basis of provisions in a company manual which are not provided/explained to employees. It is illegal to require an employee to sign an undertaking agreeing to pay the company an amount (say, P20,000) when the employee resigns from, or worse, fails to qualify…

MANILA, Philippines – Foreign investments in stocks, government securities and peso-denominated assets yielded a net inflow of $182 million from January to August, reversing an outflow of $446 million recorded a year ago, due mainly to improving investor sentiment, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.

You hate your job. You’re thinking of quitting. You are not happy and you find that you have to drag yourself out of bed every morning so you can go to work. If this is your situation then today’s message is for you.

MANILA, Philippines – Lawmakers yesterday expressed apprehension that a leadership vacuum will result if there is a failure of elections next year.

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang has assured the International Labor Organization (ILO) that the government will cooperate in the probe into the killing of 92 labor union leaders.

Entitlement is a strong word. It is synonymous to privilege and prerogative. Entitlement is also a dangerous word. It is filled with pompous self-proclaimed right.

Amadeus Philippines, an information technology solutions provider to the travel and tourism industry, said it will help train tourism students of six universities and colleges, In a statement, Amadeus said it signed agreements with De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, Far Eastern University, Lyceum of the Philippines University, San Sebastian College, University of the Philippines,…

WASHINGTON, D.C.: A massive US stimulus plan has created up to 1.1 million jobs and is expected to lift the economy by three percentage points in the third quarter, the White House said Thursday. Following implementation of the nearly $800-billion plan early this year, “the trajectory of the economy changed materially toward moderating output decline…

At least 170 undocumented Filipino workers stranded under the Khandara Bridge in Jeddah are already set for repatriation, an official said Friday.

A lawmaker has filed a bill seeking to prohibit the use of styrofoam packaging by food service businesses and operations in a bid to curb life-threatening diseases associated with the frequent use of the such packaging.

An internationally renowned information technology (IT) expert yesterday refuted claims by Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) and Smartmatic International Corp. (Smartmatic) joint venture, the winning bidder for the 2010 automated polls, that their hardware and software are fool-proof devices, saying they are vulnerable to attack from hackers all over the world which could render next…

The Philippines, Liberia, Burma and Cambodia use child labor to produce everything, the US Department of Labor said in a report published Thursday.

Home Page A job in a factory is likely to involve the risk of asbestos exposure. Asbestos has been used to make many everyday products such as auto parts, roofing shingles, textiles and paper products.

MANILA – Around 30 overseas Filipino workers employed as household service workers arrived home from Damascus, Syria.

LONDON – ROAD accidents, pregnancy and childbirth complications, suicide, violence, the Aids virus and tuberculosis are the biggest killers of young people across the world, according to a study published on Friday.

Here’s a side story to the battle that’s going on in Congress between a union group and foreign/local management groups over the security of tenure of private sector workers and stiffer regulation in the much-abused use of temporary labor.

MANILA, Philippines—A top level Guam Senate team visited the country last week to finalize details on the hiring of 20,000 Filipino skilled workers for the construction of military headquarters in Guam beginning July 2010, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) said in a statement Thursday.

MANILA, Philippines—Help is on the way. This was the assurance given by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) Wednesday to 60 construction workers stranded in the Maldives after their employer failed to pay their wages five months after their arrival in the Indian Ocean archipelagic state.

WASHINGTON – Children are used to produce everything from pornography in Ukraine to fireworks in the Philippines and diamonds in Sierra Leone, the US Department of Labor said in a report published Thursday.

The surest way you can improve your fuel cost problem is to change your motoring habits. Listed below under four categories are 30 effective methods of doing so… no need to buy expensive add-on equipment.

The Philippines dropped 16 notches in the latest World Economic Forum (WEF) World Competitiveness Report to No. 87 out of 133 countries. Singapore ranked No. 3, Malaysia 24th, Thailand 36th, and Indonesia at 54th. The Philippines was at the bottom in a list of 23 Asian countries in the earlier World Bank competitiveness survey.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) is sending high-level representatives to conduct a one-week fact-finding to the Philippines this month to look into labor rights violations and to investigate the unexplained killing of labor union leaders.

The revolution in knowledgebased economics, globalization and the “flatness of the world” has exerted an increasing pressure in the education sector to continuously reinvent itself and be more accessible to the public. To be able to address the need for a globally competitive workforce, highly skilled individuals, and educationally qualified human resource—the Philippine higher education…

VIENNA: Oil-producing and developing countries should not bear the brunt of efforts to clean up the environment, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) crude producers’ cartel insisted Thursday, ahead of a major climate conference in December.

CEBU, Philippines – Capitol must think twice and study further the environmental impact of a coal-fired power plant before allowing the Korean Electric Company (Kepco) operate in Cebu, Korean environmentalists warned yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has urged donors to “continue, and ideally boost, their current commitments” to help the agency pull the world’s developing countries out of poverty.

MANILA, Philippines – The contraction experienced by the global economy resulting from the financial crisis now makes it virtually impossible to attain the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Although great strides have been made in efforts to make basic medicine affordable to the majority of Filipinos, the fight is far from over. Even at the risk of incurring the ire of our good friends from Pfizer who have taken time to explain Pfizer’s side of things, we will continue to write about the…

WASHINGTON — The recession is ending and the economy is finally growing again. That’s the message implicit in the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of businesses around the country, which found economic activity stabilizing or improving in most regions.