Press Release
Reference Person
MERLY GRAFE
(046)-884-0076

    Workers in the Taiwanese-owned Dyna Image Corp. Phils. burst into tears when their supervisor announced on 28 January that it would lay-off by month’s end some 200 workers who had been in the company for two years and less. However, 400 workers were in shocked disbelief when they were given the pink slip when they reported for work this morning.  Dyna, located inside the Cavite Economic Zone (CEZ) manufactures contact image sensors for CCTV and cameras.

    It was the same scenario when Intel Philippines officially announced to the remaining 1,800 workers in its Cavite plant the decision to shutdown its operations in April 2009.

    The workers’ sentiments and hopelessness are understandable, according to Merly Grafe, chairperson of the Solidarity of Cavite Workers (SCW). The Arroyo government is incapable of addressing the massive job loss and declining economy. Its fallback measures are sorely inadequate. 

    The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) could only provide seminars either for small-scale livelihood projects or for technical skills. Almost everything else is lip service.

    “It is absurd that the Arroyo government would encourage the Filipinos to apply for jobs overseas when all the rest of the world is in the same crisis,” said Grafe. 

    The SCW claims that the government’s large dependence on foreign investments and export of labor to sustain the national economy could have never prepared the country to deal with the effects of the worldwide economic collapse. Instead of developing the national industrial base that should serve as the country’s economic backbone, it had relied to a large extent on such sources as OFW earnings, foreign capital and export earnings that become unstable and volatile in times of crisis.

    “The government must take bolder measures now to avert an upsurge of discontent among the workers. It should realign public funds, suspend the EVAT and implement a debt cap, among others, and redirect the money to develop agriculture, and subsidize the production of primary and basic commodities to effect lower prices,” said Grafe.

    Monitoring and documentation by the Workers Assistance Center (WAC), a non-government institution with offices in Cavite and Batangas, show that manufacturing companies enforce vacation, reduce man-hours, encourage voluntary resignation, and, worse, reduce its work force through retrenchment to cope with lack of orders and decline in product demands.

    Data from 24 factories in several large economic zones in Cavite and Batangas registered that since November 2008 more than 17,000 workers are affected by lay offs while more than 19,000 workers endure reduced workweek.
WAC noted that subcontracting parts of its operations by big factories in the manufacture of goods accelerates the loss of jobs several folds.

    American Power Conversion (APC), French-owned producer of uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and surge protectors, will shutdown its operations starting February 1 after it has implemented a four-day workweek since the start of the year affecting its 800 workforce. The combined 1,000 workforce of Japanese-owned International Precision, Inc. and Korean-owned Danam Philippines, Inc., two of its suppliers most of which are likewise located in the CEZ, follow the same fate as those in APC.

    Ibiden Philippines, Inc., a Japanese-owned factory in the First Philippine Industrial Park in Sto. Tomas, Batangas has announced a temporary shutdown starting February affecting its 1,500 workers. In December 2008, the company already laid-off 3,000 contractual workers. Ibiden is a supplier of ball grid and flip chip arrays to Intel Philippines.

    WAC also noted that the effects are felt largely by workers from electronics and automotive related factories, which supply parts and components to such corporations like American-owned Intel Philippines, Texas Instruments, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler; and Japanese-owned Epson, Fujitsu, Toyota and Isuzu. Japan and the United States have both declared an economic recession in 2008.

    Aside from the factories cited above that have resorted to lay offs and reduced work week the list includes Yazaki-EDS Manufacturing Inc.  (Yazaki-EMI), Clarion Mfg. Corp Philippines, Phil. Int’l Mfg. Engineering Services-P IMES, Hayakawa Electronics (Phils) Corp, NT Philippines Inc., Astec Power Phils. Inc., San Technology Inc., MD Tech Phils. Inc., Mitsuba Mfg. (Phils) Corp., Maxim Phils. Corp.in Cavite; Mitsuba Mfg. Batangas Corp, Little Fuse Philippines Inc., Epson Precision Philippines., Pilipinas Kyohritsu Inc. in Batangas. All these factories employ 500 to 7,000 workers.

    Meanwhile, the SCW has not noticed the same trend in garments and apparel factories except for the usual and seasonal slowdown in production of some. A number off the lay-offs and temporary shutdowns reported in this sector have been going on since the garments quota was abolished in 2005, especially affecting smaller and less established factories.  #