Gloomy Christmas awaits workforce

Christmas may be in the air but something just doesn’t feel right: more Filipinos are finding themselves out of a job as the year draws to a close.

Almost 400 Filipinos are getting laid off daily from their jobs due to the prevailing economic crisis, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said yesterday.

Records from the DOLE-Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics show that a daily average of 367 workers were retrenched or temporarily displaced in the first 10 months of the year, or a total of 111,080 nationwide.

Of that figure, 56,531 workers were rendered jobless following mass layoffs or the permanent shutdown of 2,294 commercial establishments from January to October.

Aside from these retrenched workers, 54,549 others in 526 firms were temporarily laid off, placed on job rotation or had their working hours reduced during the same period.

The job losses were largely concentrated in manufacturing, which accounted for 58.9 percent or 33,320 of the total displacements. This was partly attributed to the proliferation of pirated products mainly coming from China, which ironically is already a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Ranking a far second was the service sector or businesses involved in transportation, storage, and wholesale and retail trade.

Major reasons cited for job losses were lack of market, slump in demand, downsizing and financial losses resulting from the prevailing economic crisis in the country.

Based on the records, there was a massive retrenchment of workers in October apparently because of the economic crisis resulting from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

But Sto. Tomas offered some consolation, stressing that although there was an increase in the number of workers laid off in October, the number of workers retrenched in the first 10 months of the year was much lower than during the same period last year.

"Although more companies have closed down in the first 10 months of the year, there were fewer workers affected by the closures and retrenchments during the said period," Sto. Tomas explained.

She also gave assurances that the government is exerting all effort to immediately provide jobs or alternative livelihood to those who will be displaced by company closures.

Among the companies reeling from the economic slowdown as well as labor unrest is the multinational Nestle Philippines, whose plant in Cabuyao, Laguna helps supply infant formula milk to Southeast Asian countries. It has another plant in Lipa City, Batangas.

DOLE is expected to rule on the Nestle standoff in the next two weeks to decide the fate of 5,000 employees in a collective bargaining agreement deadlock with management.

Nestle’s notice of strike was what greeted Trade Secretary Manuel Roxas II upon his arrival recently from the United States where he accompanied President Arroyo on a working visit.

The stalemate has stalled Nestle’s plans to invest P3-billion more in its operations in the country, its chairman and chief executive officer Juan Santos said.

Nissan Diesel Motor Co. Ltd. also announced it would dissolve its tourist bus-making venture in the Philippines on Dec. 31 due to shrinking demand for tourist buses in the country, a Reuters report said.

The closure of the Japan-based company here will affect 30 Filipino workers, the report said.

With the grim prospect of 15,000 more workers being laid off by yearend, the state-run Technical Education Skills and Development Authority has opened an outreach center at Glorietta Center, Makati to provide employment possibilities for displaced workers.

Designed to boost the "employability" of the jobless, the TESDA center is called the "Kasanayan-Kabuhayan One-Stop Shop Services window."

TESDA director general Lucita Lazo said the service window will serve to bring the agency’s services closer to the people, and familiarize the public with the training they can avail of in TESDA centers.

The Arroyo administration has scheduled a socio-economic summit on Dec. 10 to draw up an action plan that may be critical in the country’s economic survival in the coming months.

Though the summit’s action agenda may not necessarily be translated into policy, this would still be useful in the future, business analysts said.

The jobless rate, which went up to 13.3 percent in April from 11.4 percent in January, showed little sign of wavering.

The economic fallout is not limited to the Philippines, however. The United States economy had only recently officially fallen into recession, while Japan reported a record jobless rate in October.

And the once bullish Canadian economy showed signs of slowing down in the third quarter this year, the first time it sputtered in a decade.