From the News! – Your Daily News

by Joel dela Torre
from People’s Journal

MARKING the United Nations Day for Women and International Peace today, the Commission on Human Rights called on government to improve protection and programs for the rights of women.

The CHR said that women and girls as human beings are entitled  along with men and boys to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, thus the need for the quick passage into law of the Magna Carta for Women aside from strengthening the application of the law on violence against women and children.

Because there are certain issues that are more problematic for women than men, they need stronger protection, CHR chairperson Leila de Lima said.

The main issues that threaten the rights of women in the Philippines include domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, extrajudicial killings, unequal job opportunities, internal displacement due to armed conflict, health care including reproductive health, education and literacy, and proper treatment in the criminal justice system.

“Equality and non-discrimination are not achieved by having gender-neutral laws per se, or by having laws that are ‘equally applicable to men and women, instead, equality and non-discrimination are fulfilled by having laws that, in their implementation allow both genders to live their lives in dignity and in full enjoyment of their human rights,” De Lima said.

The CHR chief urged President Macapagal-Arroyo to sign into law at the soonest possible time the Magna Carta for Women, which covers a wide range of matters pertaining to women which make up about half of the national population.

The Senate passed the bill on the Magna Carta just before International Women’s Day.

Maricar Cinco, Southern Luzon Bureau
Inquirer.net

MANILA, Philippines—All it took was a slip of paper.

That determined whether a worker goes or stays, at least for now.

It will tell if the worker is “Intel inside.”

The workers have awaited the handing out of the half-sheet of paper since Intel Corp., a US-based microchip company, announced on Jan. 22 that it would shut down this year its plant in Cavite province because of the sharp drop in global demand for its products.

Rodel Escopete, 40, a technician at the plant for the past 13 years, awaited his fate during his shift Wednesday night as the company started to “identify” the second batch of workers to be laid off.

At press time, he said he and his wife, a machine operator, received the piece of paper saying that they would be laid off in the second batch.

The paper read: “As previously communicated, WW06 [work week 6] is the week employees will be notified about Phase 2 people movement in Intel Cavite. Please proceed to Room …”

The Escopetes were among some 200 workers on the night shift who were told that their last day would be on April 30. Hours before, some 200 workers on the day shift received the same bad news.

Relieved

“I have mixed feelings,” he said when asked how he felt about the news. “It’s a sudden change,” Escopete said. He said he also felt “relieved” that it was over.

In the room where the workers were told to proceed, Mike Wentling, general manager of Intel Cavite, held a PowerPoint presentation which showed the training program that the company would provide to the laid off workers and their separation pay package, according to Escopete.

On Thursday, another group (a second set of day and night shift workers) will be waiting as anxious as the Escopetes couple, for that slip of paper.

Cooking, call centers

From this day until his last day in the company, Escopete said he would still participate in the production while attending a training program on call centers, cooking and other skills. He said the company hired trainers to prepare the workers for transition to other jobs.

The company will also offer an “early move-out offer” for those who want to skip the two-month transition training.

Of the 4,000 workers last year, fewer than 3,000 remain, Escopete said.

Two years ago, there were 6,000 people working in the two buildings on the Intel Campus in General Trias, Cavite, according to Escopete. The other workers in one building were absorbed by a new company in which Intel is an investor.

Escopete said that as early as the second quarter of 2008, workers had already noticed a 40-percent to 60-percent reduction in their workload.

News went around that the company was relocating to another site since the present building was no longer “physically safe.”

“It was a false hope,” Escopete said because by the fourth quarter of the year, the manufacturing that originally included microprocessors and flash drives was reduced to only motherboard chip sets.

First phase

“Phase one (first batch of retrenchment) was announced in October and the last day (of work of the batch) was on Dec. 31,” he said.

He said that about 50 percent of the company’s direct labor, including technicians and machine operators, was among those listed in Phase 1. Managers accounted for 30 percent of the batch.

“What we were expecting was (only) a reduction in head count that will happen by late 2009 or early 2010,” he said.

Surprised

The technician said the workers were surprised on the day the company confirmed the shutdown of the plant.

They have “no idea” how the company identifies who will be let go next.

After the second phase was set to be announced Wednesday, they are expecting Phase 3 by the third quarter of 2009 and the “de-installing” of machines by June.

Escopete said there would be a four-week temporary shutdown, with the first two weeks to take place in late February.

Job hunt

Escopete earns P20,000 to P25,000 a month, while his wife receives P15,000 to P18,000.

They were able to buy a house and a motorcycle out of their monthly income.

“(I will) wait and see,” said Escopete when asked about his plans after the company lays him off. He said he would probably look for a job in another electronics company or in the call centers.

“Some (employees) here, already wanted to be “identified” (in the phasing),” he said.

He heard that the company was offering a good package of “multiplier” (separation pay), tax incentives, and bonuses to its employees.

Getting worse

Escopete believed the company when it said that the global economic crisis was the reason he was about to lose his job.

He said he had been hearing similar cases in other semiconductor companies in Cavite.

“The situation is admittedly getting worse very fast and the case of Intel is just one case among many,” Merly Grafe, chair of the Solidarity of Cavite Workers (SCW), said in a statement.

The group said that on Jan. 29, Taiwanese-owned Dyna Image Corp. Philippines announced it would retrench some 200 workers who would be with the company for two years by February.

Ricardo Martinez Sr., regional director of the Department of Labor and Employment-Calabarzon, earlier said that the electronics sector or the export industry in general was the most affected by the crisis.

Modified work schedules

He said the labor department was trying to appeal to companies to modify the work schedules first before resorting to retrenchment.

The modified work schedule, from six days down to only five or four days a week, was the most rampant scheme of the companies, he said.

Data from the labor department showed that 14,000 workers in Calabarzon were laid off, while 19,000 workers were affected by the fewer work hours from October 2008 till late January this year.

Up to 300,000 workers in export-oriented industries may lose their job in the first half of the year, according to Labor Secretary Marianito Roque.

At the beginning of the 7 p.m. evening shift of Team 2, he said about 200 of them were given the white envelope stating that their last day of work would be on April 30.

He said the Phase 3 will be announced on April 1 who will be reporting until June, and the last batch to de-install the machines will be reporting only until the third quarter of the year. It will be “zero employee” by then, he said.

Dale G. Israel
Cebu Daily News

Picketing former employees of Giardini del Sole Wooden Furniture Inc. yesterday agreed not to block the entry of those still employed by the company into the firm’s factory in barangay Alang-Alang, Mandaue City.

In exchange, the management of Giardini del Sole promised to give the retrenched workers their separation pay and back wages.

The agreement was reached at the office of Mayor Jonas Cortes, who, along with Department of Labor and Employment in Central Visayas (DOLE-7) director Elias Cayanong, mediated between the retrenched workers and Giardini del Sole management.

“We are scheduled to meet again this Friday. We don’t know yet how much (the retrenched workers) will be paid or when,” said Primitivo Ginoo, president of the company’s workers’ union.

Yesterday’s private meeting lasted more than two hours. It was the culmination of a day that started with a picket by retrenched workers outside the Giardini del Sole gates.

Giovanni Boschi, owner of Giardini del Sole, sought City Hall’s intervention after picketing members of the Nagkahiusang Pwersa ng Mamumuo sa Giardini allegedly prevented employees from entering the factory.

Mayor Cortes and City Hall staff arrived and herded the retrenched workers, company employees and management into buses so that they could meet in the mayor’s office.

Early afternoon, Cortes first met with the retrenched workers and union members. Later, Cayanong arrived and joined the meeting. Later, it was management’s turn to talk with Cortes.

By around 2:30, management, retrenched workers, union members and Cayanong all met at the mayor’s office.

Reuters
Inquirer.net

MANILA, Philippines – (UPDATE 2) Annual inflation eased to a 10-month low of 7.1 percent in January on declining food and oil prices, the statistics office said Thursday.

Inflation in December was at 8.0 percent from a year earlier.

Core inflation, which strips out some volatile food and energy items, edged down to an annual 6.9 percent in January from 7.3 percent in December.

Meanwhile, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the country’s central bank, said the lower annual inflation in January gave it the flexibility needed to supply the financial system with sufficient liquidity to shield the economy from the global downturn.

“This confirms our expectation for continued slowdown in price increases and gives the central bank more room to support the economy and ensure there is sufficient liquidity for the efficient working of the financial markets,” central bank governor Amando Tetangco told reporters in a mobile phone text message.

Analysts see this as a signal for a further reduction in interest rates of as much as 1 percentage point.

The central bank has lowered rates by a 1 percentage point over the last two months to 5.0 percent for borrowing and 7.0 percent for lending after inflation has steadily come down from a near 17-year peak of 12.5 percent in August.

The central bank will hold its next rate-setting meeting on March 5, the same day February inflation data will be announced.

Tonette Orejas, Central Luzon Desk
Inquirer.net

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Another Filipino working at the shipyard of the Korean-owned Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction Philippines Inc. in Subic, Zambales, died at the work site Friday after a heavy metal pipe being moved by other workers fell on his head.

Another worker was injured in the incident that took place at past 9 a.m., according to Noel de Mesa, president of the Shipyard and Construction Workers Association. The victims were taken to the St. Jude Hospital in nearby Olongapo City.

“His head was smashed,” De Mesa said, referring to what had happened to Raldon del Rosario, 19.

Boichek Camalao, 24, suffered bone fractures, it was learned.

Both men hail from Tabuk, Kalinga.

They worked at the shipyard’s Assembly Part 3, belonging to the 18th batch of workers hired at the shipyard.

Officials of Hanjin and its regulatory body, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, did not reply to queries seeking confirmation of the incident.

Seventeen workers have died from work and traffic related incidents at the job site since 2006.

from ITUC-CSI

LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund will sharply cut growth forecasts this month and the world will not return to strong growth for two or three years, IMF Managing-Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Wednesday.

“Things are not improving,” Strauss-Kahn said in an interview with the BBC’s “Hard Talk” programme. The International Monetary Fund’s last forecast was “not that good” and a new forecast, to be released in a few days, will be “even worse”, he said.

Asked about the fund’s forecasts for the world, U.S. and European economies, Strauss-Kahn said he did not know exactly how much these would be cut, but added: “I’m afraid that at least half a point or one percentage point down.”

In its November forecast, the IMF projected world output would grow by 2.2 percent in 2009 while the United States would shrink by 0.7 percent and the euro area would shrink by 0.5 percent but the credit crunch has tightened its grip since then.

Asked if the downwards revision meant the IMF expected a contraction in U.S. and European economies of between one and two percent this year, Strauss-Kahn said: “There is going to be this kind of contraction in the U.S., in Europe, including the UK.”

Emerging countries, while still growing, would also do worse than expected, he said. “China, India, Brazil, other emerging countries are going to experience very slow growth.

“Altogether, this first half of 2009 will be bad, the second half may show some improvement, but recovery can begin only at te beginning of 2010,” he said. “We are not going to go back to a high rate of growth before two or three years,” he added.

Strauss-Kahn said the IMF may need more funds in six months to finance bailouts of countries that fall victim to the financial crisis.

“The IMF has enough money today to deal with the countries coming today. If the crisis goes on, which is the most probable way, then down the road, in six months from now, we will need more money,” he said. “That’s why we need to organise now the way to have more money in six months, because it won’t be done overnight.”

from ITUC-CSI

Washington, 18 January 2009 (ITUC OnLine):  Commitments to strengthen social programmes for workers hit by the economic crisis and to increase action on core labour standards were made by World Bank President Robert Zoellick and IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the conclusion today of two days of meetings with an 85-member international trade union delegation led by the President and General Secretary of the ITUC, General Secretaries of Global Union Federations and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD, and leaders of national trade union organisations from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

IMF Managing Director Strauss-Kahn and senior Fund officials told the delegation that the Fund had not foreseen the amplitude of the current crisis, nor its impact on working people, and appreciated the experience and expertise of the labour movement, which for some years has been warning about the dangers for the global economy posed by unregulated exotic financial instruments.  ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder reminded the IFIs that unions should be brought in as full partners to the processes currently taking place for establishing a new regulatory framework for the global financial system: “Unions want to ensure that the financial sector is at the service of the real economy, not the other way around.  Unions will not be satisfied with any new regulatory framework that does not achieve that goal.”

For his part, World Bank President Zoellick stated that the World Bank did not share the views of those who saw labour market deregulation as part of the solution to the crisis.  IMF officials said that they were encouraging the countries to which they provide emergency financial assistance to give a priority to preserving social safety nets, but members of the union delegation gave examples in their countries where some of the conditions or required “prior actions” for IMF loans had serious negative impacts on working people.

Ryder urged the IMF to ensure that all countries adopt anti-recession policies: “We have commended the IMF for calling for coordinated fiscal stimulus to counter the global economic crisis over the past year, but we pointed out that by encouraging most developing countries to practice ‘fiscal discipline’, the Fund deters them from participating in the stimulus effort.  Unions also think that the IMF should be doing more to call on those countries, including some wealthy G20 members, which are not taking on their full of share of supporting the global economic recovery that they do so.”

IFI officials agreed with the union delegation that the crisis could add to pressures undermining workers’ rights, and Zoellick promised to take further steps to ensure that Bank-funded projects and activities are in full compliance with the ILO’s core labour standards (CLS), thus confirming the Bank’s view that CLS are a floor that must be respected in all countries and in all circumstances.  World Bank officials announced their intention to include CLS in the Bank’s master procurement standards, and Ryder offered to work with the Bank in implementing them: “Trade unions have cooperated successfully with the International Finance Corporation [IFC- the World Bank's private-sector lending arm] in the objective of obtaining full compliance with the CLS requirement that IFC adopted in 2006, and we look forward to the other divisions of the World Bank taking similar steps in staff training, monitoring of projects and putting in place a complaints mechanism.”

However Ryder also cautioned the World Bank that it was not internally coherent in its support for fundamental workers’ rights as long as its highest circulation publication, Doing Business, continued to promote the idea that countries with the lowest level of labour regulations are the best in employing workers.  “The Bank’s own Independent Evaluation Group found no relation between Doing Business’s so-called ‘employing workers’ indicator, which gives highest marks to countries that regulate the least, and employment levels.  Additionally, Doing Business rewards notorious violators of workers’ rights.”  He noted that the 2009 edition of Doing Business gave its first and fourth highest rankings for ‘employing workers’ among the 25 countries of Eastern Europe-Central Asia to Georgia and Belarus, two countries where the ILO found the governments to have committed serious violations of core labour standards conventions.  “No minor adjustment will correct these flawed indicators”, said Ryder, adding, “Doing Business should get out of the business of labour standards”.

The international trade union delegation also put forward its “green jobs” agenda and urged the World Bank to support their strategy for meeting the combined challenges of climate change and global recession through employment-intensive carbon reduction projects.  Bank officials expressed interest in Global Unions’ approach and suggested further consultations on a country level and internationally.

The ITUC represents 168 million workers in 316 affiliated national organisations from 157 countries.

Dennis O’Reilly
CNET News.com

After years of writing about PCs, I’ve concluded that computer users care about only three things (in no particular order): speed, security, and reliability. But the fastest, safest, sturdiest PC in the world won’t do you any good, if overuse has made you too sore to turn the darn thing on.

Organizations of all types and sizes are cutting workers, which usually leaves even more work for the people whom they retain. Computers have been a primary reason for the increase in worker productivity in the last few decades, but sooner or later, all those hours in front of a PC take their toll.

You can find plenty of advice from ergonomic experts on proper posture when working on a PC, and there’s no end of special keyboards, mice, and other input devices designed to avoid repetitive stress injuries. But the fact is, what works to keep one computer user healthy will make another want to put their chiropractor’s phone number on speed dial.

Case in point: about 20 years ago, I developed a bad case of tendinitis in my right wrist, caused by over-mousing. Someone suggested that I use a digital tablet in place of a mouse. After a few months of twice-a-week physical therapy and the switch to a tablet, my wrist was back to normal. I’ve been using a tablet ever since, and my wrist has been fine ever since.

Of course, somebody else may have no problem using a mouse but finds his fingers cramping after a day of twirling a stylus around a tablet. The key is to try various alternatives to find the PC setup that makes the difference for you.

I’ll give you one more example: I was forever trying to find the office chair that wouldn’t send my back into spasm at the end of every workday. Then I noticed that a co-worker with similar back problems had traded in her chair for a standing workstation.

You guessed it. I went the stand-up route and noticed an improvement in my back health after only a few days. That was five years ago, and I’ve been standing in front of my PC ever since. (Two bits of advice if you do likewise: get a footstool and well-soled shoes.)

Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines — Amid a looming economic slowdown in the Philippines for 2009, the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is expected to remain strong. However, growth will be as big as 2008, an official of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) said.

“No doubt the BPO industry will remain solid in 2009 and there will be challenges to be faced. The BPO growth this year will be almost the same as the 2008 growth, which was double digit,” CICT Commissioner for Cyber Services Monchito Ibrahim said in an interview.

The Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP), the biggest organization of outsourcing providers in the Philippines, is expecting a “cautious” growth of 35 percent for 2009. By 2010, the organization said the outsourcing industry will earn about $12 billion to $13 billion.

Ibrahim said the CICT has drafted a year-long strategic plan for 2009, which would be presented to members of BPAP next week. The CICT expects to synchronize its plans with the industry player during the meeting.

“We’re also consolidating our 2008 figures to really know how much the industry has earned,” Ibrahim said.

The CICT official acknowledged that the human resource shortage remained the biggest concern of the industry.

Ibrahim said they are hoping that the P300 million contact center training started at the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) will continue and its budget doubled.

Meanwhile, the agency is pushing for the adoption of the IBM Service Science, Management and Engineering program in universities to develop more high-level professionals for the BPO industry.

“We’re pushing very hard. We are also hoping that some of the bills proposed to Congress would be approved,” Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim was referring to the data privacy and cybercrime bills, which hopes to create a more attractive environment for BPO providers.

Honesto General
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 story.

Human rights — i.e., freedom from unlawful arrest, imprisonment, torture or execution — are regarded as belonging fundamentally to all persons.

What is Karapatan? At the suggestion of Inquirer Research, I visited Karapatan’s website . I downloaded 12 pages of stuff. But after reading them — twice, mind you — Karapatan impressed me as a shadowy organization.

Karapatan claims to be an “Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights.” But the website did not include the name of even one member of the alliance. And yet, Karapatan claims to be “the biggest human rights network in the Philippines today.”

Only the name of the secretary general, Marie Hilao-Enriquez, appears on the website. What is this I hear, that at the top of Karapatan’s table of organization is the wife of a well-known communist?

Are Karapatan’s articles and bylaws registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission? When was the last elections held to select the governing body? Or, have the officials been elected for life?

In the insurance industry there are associations of insurers and reinsurers, broker and agents, adjusters and surveyors. But everything is transparent. Each association has its articles and bylaws available for scrutiny by the Insurance Commission. Meetings are held regularly. Annual elections are held, sometimes hotly contested.

Karapatan can be virulent. Listen to this: “The Arroyo government has not lived up to the promise of respecting the dignity and fulfilling the human rights of Filipinos, as we have not been any better over the last eight years … and the government has instead unleashed the brutality of the armed forces against the very people whose lives it has sworn to protect.” I have my complaints against the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration and the Armed Forces, but this is too much.

Karapatan lashes out at everyone and everything in sight. This is the classic tactics of communists.

How much of the statistics Karapatan foists on us is verifiable? In a decades-long war against the communist New Peoples Army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf, there are bound to be human rights violations. But nothing compared to the slaughter of 250,000 communists in Indonesia during Suharto’s reign.

Karapatan seems to be well funded. Where does it get its money? Is it taxable, and, if so, are taxes being paid?

Is this one more proof that the Communist Party is the richest in the country?

With editing by INQUIRER.net