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Calabarzon region hardest-hit by global crisis
Philippine Daily Inquirer - March 5, 2009
Jerome Aning – More than 40,000 workers have lost their jobs in the country since the onset of the global financial crisis in October last year, Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said Wednesday.
Roque said more than half of the 40,191 workers laid off came from the Calabarzon region, where economic zones hosting companies engaged in manufacturing and export are located. Calabarzon consists of the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon.
"The export industry in the ecozones is the hardest hit because of the slump in demand," he said at a press briefing.
Other big groups of dismissed workers are those from the garments and furniture industries, according to the labor secretary.
Roque said in January that 200,000 workers could lose their jobs in the first six months of the year. Millions of workers are losing their jobs in developing and developed countries as the global recession deepens. The layoffs in the Philippines are not limited to factories.
Call center layoff
US-based outsourcing firm Accenture is laying off 500 people from its Manila-based operations due to the effects of the global financial crisis, the labor department said Wednesday.
Accenture Philippines has filed a notice of retrenchment for about 500 workers at its facilities in Manila, said Labor Undersecretary Rosalinda Baldoz.
Accenture, which engages in business process outsourcing, including call centers, employs 16,000 people in Manila and the central city of Cebu.
Industry leaders had predicted that the sector would not be affected by the global financial turmoil as companies in developed countries would outsource more of their functions abroad to save money.
A spokesperson for the company said the decision was made after a "thorough review of our business operations in the Philippines."
"We saw a need to balance or match the skills of our workforce, with the demand coming from our clients," company spokesperson Arnie Alcazar said.
He said the redundancy program began in January and only affected the IT department. "We continue to hire other people to meet the needs of our clients such as our BPO business."
Disproportionately affected
A militant labor group said women workers in Cavite were disproportionately affected by the mass layoffs, work rotation and other schemes.
"Women workers want a pro-labor bailout package to alleviate the burden of the crisis on our feminine shoulders," said Judy Ann Miranda, secretary general of the Partido Manggagawa (PM).
Miranda quoted a report from Marites Manjares of the United Cavite Workers Association, a PM affiliate, stating that workers recently laid off or facing layoff in four electronics factories at the Cavite Economic Zone in Rosario, Cavite, were mostly women.
The factories were Clarion, with more than 200 to be retrenched this month; P. Imes, where more than 100 were fired last month, with separation pay allegedly released only this month; Dyna Image, with 400 jobs cut in January; and N.T. Phils. where 400 workers were terminated last December.
Double burden
"The traditional coping mechanism of the workers and the poor is the safety net of family relations but this unduly relies on the unpaid work of women. The double burden means women are exploited as cheap labor in the factories and then utilized as unpaid workers in the home," Manjares said.
She said the government must provide social protection so that workers and the poor "do not rely exclusively on the coping mechanism of family relations and women are not weighed down by the heavier double burden."
First Cavite Industrial Estate
Garment workers denounced companies in Cavite for using the global crisis to justify massive layoffs, forced leaves and reduced work schedules.
Merly Grafe, chair of the Solidarity of Cavite Workers (SCW), said "the effect of the global crisis on the (garment and apparel) sector remains minimal to cause massive layoffs, decreased working hours and closures."
The phase-out of the garment export quota in 2005 did affect smaller companies but not those in the First Cavite Industrial Estate (FCIE) in DasmariC1as town, Grafe said.
She said the garment sector had experienced seasonal and yearly slowdown in production, especially after the shipment of a large volume of orders, long before the global crisis started.
Data from SCW showed that Golden Will Fashion Philippines had reduced its workforce from 232 to only 100 last December and enforced the vacation of some 400 workers on Feb. 20.
The company also laid off 26 people on Dec. 23, four of whom were officials of the workers' union.
Seojin Apparel enforced on Dec. 24 the vacation of 500 workers. They said they received the other half of their December salary in January, but did not get their 13th month pay.
Another garment factory, A-Grade Manufacturing, enforced the vacation of around 150 workers in February and warned of a shutdown, citing that there were no orders from buyers.
Rally On Thursday, at least 100 workers staged a rally in front of FCIE to denounce the companies' "schemes such as forced vacation and temporary shutdowns," said SCW secretary general Aries Soledad.
Ricardo Martinez, Calabarzon regional director of the Department of Labor and Employment, said the three companies had not submitted documents on retrenchment and shutdown but "were just considering flexible work arrangement with the DOLE Cavite provincial office."
Government help
Roque said the government was doing all it can to help the retrenched workers get jobs.
Of the 40,000 who lost their jobs, the government was able to help 12,000 find new employment while another 3,000 were given livelihood assistance.
Roque said the labor department would meet with the leaders of the affected industries on Thursday to assess the situation.
"We need to know how deep the problem is so that we can craft our response," he said.
Roque earlier hosted in Malacaang two forums with employers and recruiters' groups to discuss the worsening jobs crisis.
[With reports from Maricar Cinco, Inquirer Southern Luzon and Agence France-Presse.]
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