Unpunished SSS strikers at it again

Workers at the Social Security System are restless again. They are pressing the board of trustees to release their 14th-month pay before school tuition time in June. But the trustees can’t comply. The SSS is low in cash. Despite the recent increase in employers’ counterpart SSS contributions for their employees, collections are falling short of target. The trustees cannot just take the money from elsewhere. SSS operating expenses are, by law, limited to only a certain percentage of collections. It does not help any that billions of pesos in members’ contributions are tied up in worthless stocks and failed behest investments under the Estrada tenure. The mutual fund to which 24 million members have been making mandatory contributions for years is going bankrupt.

The workers are not about to take no for an answer. They have had a lively experience in pushing demands. When they wanted Malacañang-appointed president Vitaliano Nañagas out, they went on a daily protest, then a work slowdown, and finally a strike on Aug. 1-2, 2001. All because they didn’t like the way Nañagas was changing some management and staff practices. They were emboldened when 12 top managers, whom Nañagas was quietly investigating for the behest investments, joined them.

They got away with it, despite a strike ban on government workers. The trustees didn’t life a finger. It had to take outsiders – SSS pensioners from the Philippine Association of Retired Persons – to sue the 12 managers and 10 union leaders before the Ombudsman. Only then did the trustees move, and only to extricate the strikers from imminent dismissal from the service. Case evaluators already had found evidence of gross misconduct – a firing offense – when the trustees asked the Ombudsman to turn over the matter to them. The board tasked ex-officio trustee Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas to head a three-man panel of jurors. After more than a year of hearings, the trustees acquitted all but two of the accused: executive vice president Horacio Templo and senior vice president Marla Laurel. But they said the two were guilty of simple neglect in not ensuring smooth public services during the two-day strike. This, despite newsclips showing the two to be leading the strikers. The trustees initially recommended punishment of forfeiture of three months’ pay. But they lightened it to one month’s salary forfeiture, payable in three installments. Only a few years ago Sto. Tomas, as head of the Civil Service Commission, had dismissed from service a group of public school teachers who staged a strike to protest delayed releases of meager salaries. Now she prefers light penalties for Templo and Laurel, who draw monthly salaries of P350,000 and P250,000 respectively.

The SSS workers are at it again. They’ve started circulating scandal sheets about present president Corazon dela Paz’s frequent travels abroad that drain operating funds. That was the same way they started agitating for Nañagas’s ouster in 2001. As in two years past, the scandal sheets could graduate to black armband protests, then work slowdowns, and eventually the big bang. It’s not the workers’ fault, of course, that the SSS can’t pay their 14th-month salaries.

With the managers unpunished for breaking SSS rules on investing the members’ money, the mutual fund is sinking. With the wildcat strikers unpunished too or let off with light penalties, another strike is in the offing. At the losing end are the 24 million members and pensioners, who can only wonder what SSS trustees are doing about it.

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Beware of this new modus in taxi holdups. A female reader wrote about her recent harrowing experience:

"Last Saturday I hailed a cab from a Mandaluyong mall to Makati. The cabbie, in his mid-50s with salt-and-pepper hair and slightly heavy, said he just came from EDSA where traffic was heavy, and suggested we take C-5 instead. I said okay and proceeded to make some calls and texts on my cellphone.

"Before turning to Fort Bonifacio, he pointed to another taxi on the roadside with its hazard lights on. ‘He’s my friend, I need to help him,’ my cabbie said despite my protest that I was running late for an appointment.

"I knew I should have been alert. I was texting when the man from the other cab jumped in beside me with a gun and grabbed my handbag. He irritatedly threw all my papers and stuff on the floor and took P3,000 in cash. He then demanded to know the PINs from my two ATM cards.

"My cabbie and the other man drove me to New Manila, where there were not too many pedestrians. When we stopped near a bank, I noticed that the second taxi had followed us, driven by a third cohort. This third man withdrew P10,000 from the ATM and demanded to know why I didn’t have more. He also got angry when the other ATM in another bank had no deposit.

"Meanwhile, the second cabbie who had taken my cellphone asked who the man was on monitor picture. When I didn’t reply, he pointed the gun at me, and I mumbled that it was a friend whom I met in the US. Actually, it was my American husband, but I didn’t tell them because the holdup might lead to a kidnapping for ransom.

"They divided the money among themselves and dropped me off at the EDSA-Ortigas area. I am writing this to warn others."

Days ago a female friend of mine also got ripped off. She was riding a taxi home when the cabbie slowed down because a man was chasing another taxi up ahead. The man suddenly opened her door, grabbed her bag, then disappeared into a side street. The cabbie offered to take my friend to the police station to file a complaint, but he could be in cahoots.

One can’t avoid taking cabs, and not all cabbies are crooks. So I asked a PNP colonel what can best be done to avoid the modus operandi. Carry a mace if you can afford one, he suggests. But before riding a cab, get the plate number, then call somebody on the cellphone within the cabbie’s hearing that you took his taxi and what time you expect to arrive at your destination. Also, try to remember his face and markings inside the cab. And lock the doors.

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Catch Linawin Natin, Mondays at 11 p.m., on IBC-13.

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