CEBU - The government, the labor sector, and the business sector were in unison that 2009 would be a gloomy year for the labor sector.
Businessman Robert Go, director of the Philippine Retailers Association, said that with the worldwide recession and economic crunch, there will be retrenchment in the export sector, especially in the furniture, house and gift industries that are exporting to the US and Europe.
Go said that even American companies at the Mactan Export Processing Zone will have more retrenchment of its workers.
He said that Japanese companies at MEPZ will slowdown their operations or have a three-day workweek as casuals will be laid off or regular employees may even be retrenched.
Go, who is also the past governor of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that Filipino workers going abroad will slowdown, including healthcare workers and nurses because USA’s small clinic and hospitals are having debt problems.
“Only food production serving locally will not be affected much but no expansion and no hiring of new workers,” said Go, who is also the former president of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Go further said that unemployment will rise due to these factors and jobs will be scarce this year.
Sanlakas-Sugbo spokesperson Jose Aaron Pedrosa said that the global financial meltdown will provide the climate for social unrest owing not only to massive layoff of workers but also to the primacy that government would afford to favor capitalists to the detriment of labor and the poor.
Joy Lim, spokesperson of the Associated Labor Union-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, also said that 2009 would be gloomy and for labor.
“There will be massive retrenchment and daghan gyod mawad-an og trabaho. It is very sad for the workers and their respective families,” Lim added.
Mandaue City Vice Mayor Carlo Pontico Fortuna, who is the program manager and alternate chairman of the Tripartite Industrial Peace Council, said that they too are expecting retrenchment especially in the export-oriented industries like electronics, furniture apparel and even in the hotel industry.
“The possibility of labor unrest is there, although labor is aware that the economic slowdown is beyond the control of the business,” Fortuna said.
Go added that there won’t be much labor strikes either because plants will immediately close if there is labor unrest.
Lawyer Hidelito Pascual, management representative to the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board in Region VII, said there will be more lay-offs than labor strikes. — Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon/MEEV (THE FREEMAN)
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