Digitel starts release of separation pay of 13 retrenched employees

MANILA, Philippines - Digitel Telecommunication Philippines (Digitel) has started releasing the separation pay of 13 retrenched employees in compliance with a Supreme Court order.

Reuben Pangan, Digitel spokesman, said some of the 13 employees who were terminated in 2005 had received their termination pay from the telecommunications company.

The 13 employees previously sought the intervention of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the Supreme Court (SC) after their retrenchment.

Pangan said Digitel has been complying with the orders of the DOLE and SC.

But he said Digitel has been unable to start the negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) as ordered by DOLE to implement the SC decision.

“There is no existing collective bargaining unit for Digitel following the redundancy program that was completed last March 15,” Pangan explained.

He said Digitel had to conduct a redundancy program following the decision to migrate over 140,000 landline subscribers in its franchise areas in northern, central and southern Luzon to the Philippine Long Distance Co.(PLDT).

Pangan said Digitel sought clearances from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) at every phase of the migration process.

He said Digitel decided to migrate its landline subscribers to its parent firm PLDT because its landline facilities are substantially at the end-of-life stage and would be progressively difficult to operate because there are no longer spare parts for these equipment.

“This would make Digitel subscribers increasingly vulnerable to possible service disruptions due to equipment failure. This will also affect the calling public in general as they will not be able to reach Digitel subscribers as well,” Pangan explained.

“In our manifestation to the DOLE, we have signified that due to supervening events that involve the separation of employees due to the redundancy program, Digitel has no rank-and-file employees as of March 16, 2013, hence, a non-existent collective bargaining unit,” Pangan explained.

He said 80 percent of the remaining 424 Digitel employees have so far agreed to the redundancy program, which provided a package approximately twice the amount required by law aside from a two-year medical coverage.

He said PLDT and Sun Cellular agreed to hire around two-thirds of the affected employees, and those who cannot be absorbed have been given assistance through livelihood training and workshops.

Former Digitel employees who are illegally picketing within PLDT premises did not question the redundancy program at the DOLE or the courts, Pangan stressed.

He said only 70 employees refused to accept the redundancy package and fewer than 30 are participating in the illegal picket.

“It is clear the handful of picketers have very little or almost no support from former Digitel employees,” Pangan said.