Crisis takes away 3,500 Luzon jobs

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga, Philippines—The global financial crisis has fallen hard on 47 companies in Central Luzon, leaving 3,554 workers jobless and 6,837 others working for fewer lesser hours in the last two months of 2008 until March 2 this year, reports from the Department of Labor and Employment showed.

Five companies, three of them at the Clark Freeport in Pampanga and two in Bulacan, have reported retrenching 56 employees and resorting to flexible work arrangements for 358 others.

Flexible terms include temporary closure, slowdown in operations, forced leaves, temporary lay-off, rotation of workers or compressed workweek.

The five companies are engaged in agri-business and in the manufacturing of coated paper, carpet, plastics and screws.

The DOLE regional office, through the agency’s provincial offices, has been monitoring the 47 companies firms to check when they could resume normal operations and if they have reabsorbed the affected workers, according to Geraldine Panlilio, chief of the DOLE labor standards unit.

So far, only one company, which is engaged in garments making in Bulacan, has reported to have taken back at least 219 workers in February.

At the Clark Freeport, several export firms appeared to be coping well with the economic slowdown. Imports for capital goods totaled $152.8 million in January or almost double that of the $80.1 million in January 2008, according to a report from the enterprise operations and monitoring department of the Clark Development Corp.

In the January 2009 import volume, the aviation industry took in $100 million; semi-conductors, $26.3 million; and tire, $16.1 million. The garments sector in Clark looked still bullish, grossing an import volume of $7.5 million.

The Department of Trade and Industry ranks Central Luzon third among 16 regions in terms of export receipts from the Clark Freeport, Subic Bay Freeport in Zambales and Luisita Industrial Park in Tarlac City.

In Negros Occidental, Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral Friday pledged to help the provincial government come to the rescue of workers in the sugar industry during the so-called “dead season,” when there’s no work in sugar farms and mills.

Jessup Navarro, National Food Authority administrator, said the NFA would sell 15,000 bags of rice at discounted prices to the provincial government for its food-for-work program for the sugar workers.

Undersecretary Anthony Golez, deputy presidential spokesperson, sought the NFA commitment Friday on behalf of Gov. Isidro Zayco, who wants to use the rice for food-for-work projects.

Zayco said the dead season usually lasts three to four months and sugar planters during that period provide assistance to their workers.

source: newsinfo.inquirer