SPC Power says management still willing to negotiate

CEBU, Philippines – Saying that a strike runs counter to the company’s commitment to serve power consumers in Cebu and the rest of the Visayas, the management of SPC Power Corp. maintains its call for the rank-and-file union to return to the negotiating table and abandon its threat to wage a strike.

"The SPC management would like to assure SPIU and the general public of its sincerity in achieving a mutually beneficial collective bargaining agreement in the same way that we reached a mutually beneficial accord with the supervisors’ union a month ago," SPC said in a statement.

The management said it is interested in reaching a mutually acceptable Collective Bargaining Agreement with the union and that it will refrain from commenting on “internal union problems.”

“As far as we are concerned, the union is represented by its duly elected officers,” the management said.

Earlier, the Salcon Power Independent Union expressed its willingness to lift the notice of strike it filed before the National Conciliation and Mediation Board early this year.

Late, however, SPIU union president Gaudioso Iso said that since management, during their conciliation meeting before the NCMB last week, still refused to heed their demands, they will write to Governor Gwendolyn Garcia that the union "will hold in abeyance" the lifting of their notice of strike.

The union officials, together with Naga Mayor Valdemar Chiong, sat with Garcia last week to look for a possible settlement on the ongoing labor row.

The management, for its part, said the union leaders are “flagrantly showing” that they are anti-Cebu by refusing the governor's request. Still, the union members are reportedly still welcome at the negotiating table to negotiate for a win-win CBA.

The management earlier described the threat of a strike as “uncalled for and unnecessary” because it frightens Cebuanos with long brownouts.

Among the demands of the union includes an "equal work, equal pay" scheme, a demand that the management cannot give branding it "ridiculous and unreasonable". – Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon/JMO (THE FREEMAN)