NTUC Blog

As jOB losses mount, the Social Security System will make available P500 million in emergency loans for its members who have been displaced by the global economic crisis.

It’s clear that the current recession is not going to be a fleeting phenomenon. Managers need to learn how to lead under extraordinary marketplace pressures and decreased morale, amid pay cuts, spending cuts on strategic projects, and staff reductions. As a leader, you can get through this mess in a positive manner if you take…

Borrowers with delinquent loans from any government financing institution (GFI) or housing agency may now apply for loan restructuring and condonation under a new program that aims to save their homes from foreclosure, Vice President Noli de Castro, chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), announced yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – The National Statistic Office (NSO) reported yesterday that there are now 2.855 million jobless Filipinos in January as the local unemployment rate increased to 7.7 percent owing to the global economic crisis.

Edited version of address at the Employment and Social Policy Committee, International Labour Organisation, 17 March 2009.

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang yesterday renewed President Arroyo’s call on government agencies to tighten their belts and use their savings to provide emergency employment to the poor to help tide them over in the coming months.

WE OFTEN HEAR IT SAID THAT we in the Philippines have no lack of good plans, programs, policies and laws, but our problem lies in enforcement and implementation. For example, we pride ourselves as being among the first in the world to have formulated a national strategy for sustainable development after the 1992 Rio Earth…

‘No dislocation of gov’t workers’ MANILA, Philippines — President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said “no one shall be dislocated” in the government workforce when a rationalization program is implemented.

ASIA’S export-dependent economies have been plunged into their worst crisis in decades as the global recession saps demand for the region’s consumer electronics, cars and semiconductors.

It was like throwing a bucket of water at a house ablaze. The results might not be quite promising.

MANILA, Philippines — Workers who stand to lose their jobs due to the global economic meltdown can now call the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) for help at (632)527-4437.

Infra spending to ease demand woes–Citigroup   Nearly half-a-million Filipinos could lose their jobs, according to Citigroup. In a report, the US financial services giant said Philippine gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to grow 3 percent this year and recover to 4.6 percent next year. A proxy for a country’s economic output, GDP measures…

Proposals to re-open the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant has sparked anew debates regarding its safety, economic viability and sustainability issues.

BRUSSELS – The New People’s Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines, and 45 other organizations worldwide, remain on the European Union’s list of terrorist groups after the removal of The People’s Mujahideen of Iran on Monday.

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago is certainly sick.

MOST of the rich Filipinos evade taxes, and many are members of civil society groups preaching compassion and demanding the rule of law, an official said yesterday.

Now we know: between associate justices endorsing a decision and the Chief Justice promulgating it lies Purgatory.

The UNDP is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience, and resources to help people build a better life. In 2000, at the Millennium Summit, world leaders pledged to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aim to cut poverty in half by 2015. The Country Director of…

by Honesto General from Philippine Daily Inquirer On Dec. 10, in observance of the 60th year of the of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the group Karapatan, at a news briefing in a Quezon City restaurant, presented a 32-page 2008 Human Rights Report, which was featured by the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a front-page…

by Cris Evert Lato from Cebu Daily News CEBU CITY, Philippines – About 30 percent of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are working in the United States, according to research group Ibon Foundation.

by Cielito Habito from Philippine Daily Inquirer MANILA, Philippines – Ever notice how our economy has been behaving strangely lately? The latest strange (but welcome) behavior is how job generation based on the last two quarterly Labor Force Surveys (July and October 2008) appeared healthy even in the face of the world economic slowdown that…

I am a self-confessed fan of Malcolm Gladwell, author of the international bestsellers The Tipping Point and Blink. He is an exceptional journalist who writes for The New Yorker, and was formerly a business and science reporter at the The Washington Post. His celebrity status pushed Fast Company to label him “a rock star, a…

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Banks floundered, grabbed government lifelines, and failed in 2008 as the global financial crisis shredded their own vaunted reputations for security.

Like me, you could be one of many Filipinos currently facing a major problem, a crisis, or dilemma. You might be an employer now facing the difficult decision of having to let people go because you are out of business or out of a job.

Fewer Filipino families now consider themselves poor, as self-rated poverty declined by seven percentage points in the latest survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS).

by Patricia Evangelista from Inquirer MANILA, Philippines — There is a reason why traditional democratic discourse rejects active military involvement in politics, and stresses civilian supremacy. The reason is this: that violence, or the threat of violence, which the military utilizes in the enforcement of its goals, must be without bias in its service to…

Union Debt Help Paying off debt is a matter of making more money than you spend, and then allocating the extra funds to outstanding balances — easier said than done, right? To some it may be just that easy, but to most, debt is so common that it eventually becomes a way of life. In…

by ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS Associated Press Writer from FindLaw GENEVA (AP) – The global financial crisis will add at least 20 million people to the world’s unemployed, bringing the total to 210 million by the end of next year, the U.N. labor agency said Monday. That will be the first time in a decade of…

by Mahar Mangahas from Philippine Daily Inquirer MANILA, Philippines—The third quarter 2008 Social Weather Survey, fielded Sept. 24-27, had two modules on the topic of reproductive health (RH), one module of three items done on SWS’ own initiative, and a second module of three items commissioned by the Forum for Family Planning and Development (FFPD),…

by Ernesto F. Herrera from The Manila Times CAN age have something to do with one’s ability to do a job? I would have to say it could. But don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating age discrimination. I am in fact very much against it. But age can have a bearing in a…