Employers plot summit to help cut unemployment

The country’s employers will hold an employment summit this August to help the newly-elected administration shape and act early on doable programs for job preservation and creation, the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) said yesterday.

Rene Y. Soriano, ECOP president, said the summit’s focus is on a listing of time-bound, job-creation, job-preservation projects that industry can do on its own and that industry and government can do together to cut the unemployment rate to a single digit levels.

The theme of the two-day, multi-chamber conference is Negosyo at Trabaho para sa Bayan. ECOP is the single voice of the private sector in labor and social issues, and is the employers’ representative in tripartite talks on wages and labor-management relations along with government and labor sectors.

"We, in industry, cannot replicate a development plan that a new government will be doing," he said, "but we can help define the final contours of a job-creation agenda contributing workable ideas," Soriano said.

"The industry is in the best position to outline a doable program of business and employment creation," he said. "We are, after all, in business to create wealth and jobs."

The summit will be staged in consultation with the new Cabinet. At the end of the two-day conference, industry participants will read their commitments to job preservation and job creation. Conference resolutions will be presented to the newly-elected President, who is expected to deliver a major policy speech on employment issues.

Participating in the summit are sectors coming from trade, agriculture banking and finance, manufacturing, natural resources, information technology and other services sector.

Implementation of the projects by industry and by government according to schedules will be keenly monitored, the ECOP head said.

Participants will be listing projects or making projects derived from their discussions on critical factors for business and job creation programs such as:

• strengthening the mobilization of savings;

• strengthening domestic and foreign investment facilitation;

• strengthening the culture of industrialism and entrepreneurship;

• across all sectors; and

• strengthening workplace cooperation and partnership.