Rina Jimenez-David
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Mahirap matulog ang gutom (The hungry have a hard time sleeping),” says Joel Buela, union president of A. Bylsons Co. Inc., a garments firm based in Las Piñas City in Metro Manila, which unceremoniously closed shop last April.

Buela was referring to the controversy over another garments firm, Anvil Ensembles, whose workers had accused management of overworking them to the point of plying them with drugs so they could stay awake and work with hardly a break for up to three days straight.

In the view of Buela and his co-workers, as well as the workers of another prematurely closed garment firm, Karayom Garments Manufacturing Inc. in the Bicutan area of Taguig City in Metro Manila, the sleepless workers of Anvil are at least fortunate enough to still be holding jobs.

I spoke with two officers of the Karayom Garments union: Nemia Casulla, president; and Tess Peralta, who together with more than 700 other workers at Karayom Garments have been mounting a picket for seven months now after the management, without informing them and filing an application for temporary closure on the same day, padlocked their premises last Jan. 6.

Karayom management cited “lack of orders” for 2003 in their application for temporary closure, but the workers find this hard to believe, saying that before the closure, the company was producing and shipping out 500 dozen garments daily, solely for export, and carrying such prestigious brands as Levi’s, Gap, and The Children’s Place.

Management’s unilateral and sudden decision, says Casulla, was particularly painful because for the past 27 years, “maganda naman ang takbo ng aming trabaho” [our work was proceeding well]. Fully 95 percent of Karayom Garments workers are women, and the overwhelming majority belongs to the local union Samahan ng Manggagawa sa Karayom Garments, represented by the National Federation of Labor (NFL). The longest-serving employee has been with the company for 27 years, while the newest workers, apart from the temporary hires, were hired three years ago. Most of the workers have been employed for about 15 years.

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Issues being raised by the Karayom union are: payment of 1.5 weeks unpaid salary for December 2002, payment of 60 percent of their 13th-month pay; payment of 2002 unpaid vacation and sick leaves convertible to cash as stated in the collective bargaining agreement, and unremitted contributions to the Social Security System (SSS), the Pag-IBIG housing fund, and PhilHealth health insurance.

For seven months now, say Casulla and Peralta, they have had to subsist on the charity of family and friends. While they could have borrowed from the SSS to tide them over, they cannot avail themselves of loans because, as SSS employees told them, the company had at least 24 months’ arrears.

Thus, while the union has filed charges of illegal closure and unpaid salaries and benefits with the labor department, it has also filed criminal and administrative charges against the owner, Turkish national Yusuf Suveyky, who is married to a Filipina, for alleged nonremittance of SSS premiums.

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While A. Bylsons and Sons is much smaller than Karayom Garments, with 95 workers in its employ, the workers, represented by the union ABELU-NFL, have also raised much the same issues as the Karayom Garments workers.

One common issue is a suspected ploy by the owners of both firms of opening what are commonly known as “runaway shops” in other locales, a tactic resorted to by troubled companies who wish to continue their businesses while avoiding their expensive but legal obligations to the workers of the shuttered firms.

Those observing and studying the troubled garments industry say the situation faced by the workers of Karayom Garments and Bylsons is symptomatic of the rest of the industry. While they recognize that the industry is in dire straits, says Casulla, everyone in it should be asked to do their part, “huwag naman workers lang ang mag-sakripisyo (it shouldn’t be just the workers who are making sacrifices).”

More on this issue on Friday.