Mere suspension for SSS striking execs?

Years ago when she was Civil Service Commissioner, Pat Sto. Tomas fired a bunch of public school teachers for going on strike. Painful as it was – the strike was against measly wages that weren’t even being paid on time – the decision was upheld by the Supreme Court. The law is harsh, but it is the law, right? Wrong. The law is harsh only if you’re low in the totem pole. Today as labor secretary, Sto. Tomas is also ex-officio trustee of the Social Security System. And in that capacity, she is meting a mere one-month suspension on highly-paid SSS executives who went on strike because, of all queer reasons, they didn’t like their boss.

Sto. Tomas is not alone in that selective application of the law. Seven other trustees agree to a mere slap on the wrist for executive vice president Horacio Templo, who draws a monthly salary of P350,000, and senior VP Marla Laurel, who gets just a little less. They also want pardon for six VPs, two assistant VPs, two department managers, and 10 union officers who disrupted the work at SSS. Two of the trustees, business sector representatives Sergio Ortiz-Luis and Donald Dee who wouldn’t brook a wildcat strike if it happened in their companies, probably couldn’t care less about government. Only one trustee, retired labor leader Juan Tan, dissents. "They broke the law," he stood his ground when the trustees, who compose the SSS governing body, cajoled him last week to sign the verdict.

The case seems cooked for political and personal expediencies. From the start, the trustees were reluctant to charge the strikers in court. It had to take the Philippine Association of Retired Persons (PARP) to do so on Jan. 30, 2002. The retirees were incensed. For weeks in July 2001 SSS employees were slowing down their work to protest strict public service rules that the new president Vitaliano Nañagas was setting in place. If it aimed to dent Nañagas’s reforms, it failed because the retirees were supporting him. But they couldn’t draw their meager pensions on time. SSS clerks were making idle chatter or attending union meetings on government time.

And then the worst happened. About 500 employees walked out of their jobs on Aug. 1 and 2, 2001 at the Quezon City main office and several Metro Manila branches. The dozen executives led by Templo joined them, ostensibly to "protect the institution from appointees who come and go." Leftist unionists marched in support, too. Little did they know they were being taken for a ride. Templo and his fellow-execs had their own reason for striking. Nañagas was having them quietly investigated for wasting P15.6 billion in SSS members’ money in the PCIBank buyout by Equitable Bank only months before during the Estrada administration.

To ease the tension President Gloria Arroyo replaced Nañagas with Corazon dela Paz. The strikers returned to work. But they knew the day of reckoning had to come. They started calling their strike a work stoppage, a mass action, a peaceful assembly. Whatever, the Constitution and public service and labor laws forbids government employees from leaving their jobs in concert. Television newsmen had videotaped 10 union officers and 12 executives in press briefings at the height of the strike. Templo even said on camera: "We have to show that we are not supporting him; therefore, the offices are closed... Here in Quezon City where Nañagas holds office, the office is closed to the public."

The 22 strike instigators at first thought they found a reprieve when the trustees agreed to not press charges. But PARP wanted to set a lesson. They sued them before the Ombudsman for grave misconduct, punishable at worse with dismissal from service and forfeiture of benefits. Two weeks later on Feb. 18, 2002, Dela Paz made a strange request of putting the case under SSS jurisdiction. The Ombudsman readily agreed on Feb. 21.

A three-man hearing panel was formed, headed by Sto. Tomas, with Dee and trustee Efren Aranzamendez of the labor sector as members. Administrative cases must be adjudicated in 60 days, and the respondents must be put on preventive suspension especially if they are in positions of influence to tinker around with evidence. The first hearing was held four long months later on June 5, 2002, and only to set the rules: no-nonsense, non-adversary, liberal. Fine, PARP said, so in the second hearing of June 14, it clarified and simplified its suit by adding the phrase "in conspiracy with one another and in confederation with...."

No hearing has since been held. But on Oct. 8 the panel rejected the amended complaint. PARP appealed, but was denied again on Dec. 2. Meanwhile, Templo, the SSS number-two management man next only to the president, and his 11 fellow-executives were never suspended. So with the 10 union officers, who had promised the SSS trustees not to press for wage increases in this year’s recently-concluded collective bargaining.

Last Jan. 23 PARP asked the panel to inhibit itself and return the case to the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. It said the trustees were openly biased against PARP and had willfully violated the suspension rule.

On Feb. 18 the panel denied the motion to inhibit. "A classic example of impropriety and lack of delicadeza," remarked PARP lawyer Sal Panelo. On Feb. 26 PARP filed an urgent motion with the Ombudsman to reacquire jurisdiction. A reply has yet to come.

But the trustees apparently are trying to pre-empt the Ombudsman with a unanimous decision to merely suspend Templo and Laurel on a lighter offense, and forget the infraction of the 22 others. Only octogenarian Tan stands in their way. But for how long?

President Arroyo had replaced Nañagas to stop a wildcat strike. A light penalty on striking executives and union leaders will only show other government officers and staff that they can get away with it after all. But what of the underpaid school teachers whom Sto. Tomas already fired?

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