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Tag Archives: Direct from Labor Front

Why we should stop sending maids abroad – Atty JBJ

February 07, 2013   Patnubay Manila   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

Now that the Philippine economy is at its best, after so many decades of economic stagnation, this is the best time to stop being the number one supplier of maids in the whole world. And if the government is really sincere in its declared policy to protect our women workers, there should be a total ban against deployment of domestic helpers to any country. This ban should be unconditional, immediate and total. The DOLE, in coordination, with other government agencies, and with the private sector, must be able to create enough jobs and enterprises that can replace overseas employment, as the preferred source of income for unskilled female workers. Maid deployment is a business that makes multi-millionaires of recruiters while our poor women are being jailed, raped or killed abroad. We have to stop this modern slave trade immediately.

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Why many companies lost labor cases in 2012 – Atty JBJ

January 14, 2013   Patnubay Online   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

Despite the tremendous advantages being enjoyed by employers, despite being defended by giant law firms that bill them in millions, and notwithstanding the fact that their HR executives and managers are topnotch and well-paid, companies are still losing their cases before the labor tribunals and courts. They were served adverse decisions and writ of executions that direct them to pay millions to workers. I have a favorite example involving a global company, manufacturing and selling consumer goods and represented by a very big and influential law firm, that has produced many top officials in government. This company lost a multi-million case to poor contractual workers who were represented only by a low profile lady lawyer, who used to be my law student. The question is why.

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How is Christmas for the poor? – Atty JBJ

December 26, 2012   Patnubay Online   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

Of course, the rich are spending Christmas in great style and perhaps with a big bang, with expensive gifts and luxurious parties. They travel abroad and buy branded jewelries, perfumes and luxury items and throw parties left and right. They send gifts to the powerful and the wealthy people in government and in high society, to judges, prosecutors and the police. They’d prepare red envelops with cash, in crisp thousand peso bills or five hundreds, for godchildren who shall line up to kiss their perfumed hands. They have giant Christmas trees and multi-colored lanterns that consume a lot of electricity. The rich can afford all these and more.

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Christmas in a state of national calamity – Atty JBJ

December 22, 2012   Patnubay Online   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

Christmas is just a few days from today. But the President has declared a state of national calamity for the whole nation. Not just in Compostela Valley or just for Davao Oriental, not just for Mindanao or for the whole Visayas but for the entire country. All these notwithstanding, there is no calamity, no disaster, neither hurricane, nor flood, not any rage or fury of nature can ever stop us, Filipinos, from celebrating Christmas. We will always find a way amidst all sorrows, all pains and all poverty. The genuine Christians always have some hopes in their hearts, even in these trying times. We manage to bury our dead, coffin or no coffin, mourn for the victims of fortuitous events, and then stand up and move on, to welcome the birth of the Messiah.

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When religion comes in conflict with one’s job – Atty JBJ

October 25, 2012   Patnubay Online   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

How easy it is for employers to say that an employee should render unto his work what rightfully pertains to his job, and to his church what properly belongs to his religion. That dictum is, of course, easier said than done. But down there in the offices or in the factories, where “the rubber hits the road”, so to say, it is quite difficult to keep a just and legal balance between the demands of one’s job, on the one hand, and the often immutable articles of faith of one’s church, on the other hand. Where do we draw the thin line that pulls one to one direction as an employee, and to the opposite pole as a member of a religious sect?

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Family dynasty in the workplace – Atty JBJ

October 21, 2012   Patnubay Online   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

It is not only in politics but also in the workplace that family dynasties do rule in our country and anywhere in Asia and the world. Business corporations that are owned and managed by family members present an interesting area of study and inquiry in human resource management and labor relations. Based on empirical data and anecdotal evidence gathered by this writer in various conglomerates and group of companies that are owned and controlled by families, there are significant patterns of leadership and management styles that do affect human behavior in business organizations.

Human resource managers, personnel directors and other HR practitioners, as well as labor leaders and DOLE administrators and their staff, may be interested to know why workers are finding it more difficult to cope with work and management pressures that are

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Employees should learn how to manage their income – Atty JBJ

October 17, 2012   Patnubay Online   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

One of the most perplexing phenomena confronting our employees, including OFWs today, and perhaps at all times, is the sad reality that their incomes, no matter how much, are never enough. Whether that employee is a top ranking corporate executive or a lowly minimum earner, the endemic problem that cuts across salary levels, and breaks borders of ranks, status and positions, is that salaries are never sufficient. Expenses always exceed incomes. Whether he is employed in the business world or in the government bureaucracy, every employee always faces the perennial problem of budget deficit and mounting debts. What is the cause of all these?

Most wage-earners, regardless of ranks and positions, have to grapple with the recurrent challenge of insufficient income. No matter how much an employee earns, the payables always exceed the

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Illegal dismissal of managers and executives – Atty JBJ

September 27, 2012   Patnubay Manila   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

Business executives and managers are also employees. When they are illegally dismissed or are subjected to unfair labor practices or denied of their basic rights, they can seek redress before the labor tribunals. Whilst labor laws are generally designed to protect the most vulnerable sectors of the working class, that is the rank-and-file, the casual workers, the project employees, the contractuals, and the other ‘’children of the lesser gods’’, it does not follow that managerial employees and executives are without rights arising from labor laws. This legal truism has been demonstrated time and time again, in an array of labor jurisprudence. Many of the Supreme Court rulings along this line have been promulgated just a few months ago.

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When politics comes in conflict with one’s work – Atty JBJ

September 25, 2012   Patnubay Manila   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez
As the political tempest is currently heating up, the work environment should brace up for possible problems that may arise from some employees’ exercise of their political rights to vote and to be voted upon, while at the same time continuing to work as personnel of their respective employers. For instance, if a company manager, supervisor or rank-and-file employee decides to run for public office, can he be compelled to resign by his employer? Can he insist to continue working with his employer while also serving as a public official? These and many related issues must now be addressed proactively by both labor and management. And if they cannot agree, a policy guideline from the DOLE may be very useful, to avoid unnecessary suits and labor disputes.

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Outstanding Employer of the Year (Personnel Managers’ Choice) – Atty JBJ

September 16, 2012   Patnubay Manila   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

While the leaders of Asia Pacific nations have wrapped their meeting in Vladivostok, Russia, the people managers in our country held its 49th National Conference here in Cebu. The more than two thousand personnel managers all over the Philippines have just adjourned last night its annual convention at the Waterfront Hotel in Lahug, after a three-day conference on the theme: “Revolutionizing People Management in the Philippines”. Globally recognized experts on leading and managing people, and famous inspirational speakers from all over the world graced the occasion, coming from Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. The highlight of the conference was the much-awaited proclamation of the personnel managers’ choice of the Most Outstanding Employer of the Year Award of PMAP (People Management Association of the Philippines).

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Employers’ highhanded treatment of their workers – Atty JBJ

September 06, 2012   Patnubay Manila   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

Not only in the scriptures but also in Philippine labor laws, that this dictum appears overriding: To whom much is given, much is expected. In our labor statutes and jurisprudence, employers are called upon to exercise utmost diligence, and even solicitousness in making sure that the rights of their workers are respected, their human dignity cared for and the exacting standards of labor regulations are complied with. The State is mandated to afford full protection to labor especially because employers have all the power, resources and knowledge. Thus, the law mandates that all doubts shall be resolved in favor of labor and that, in most labor disputes, the employers bear the burden of proof.

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The rules on work during disasters and calamities – Atty JBJ

August 12, 2012   Patnubay Manila   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

For the past few days, Metro Manila and most of Luzon have become a virtual sea. The endless downpour brought unprecedented volume of water, reportedly worse than Ondoy, placing the National Capital Region and nine provinces under water. This national emergency put a halt to all industrial, commercial and agricultural activities. Factories, shops, schools and offices could not operate. Plane flights and sea voyages, of both domestic and international, were suspended and land transport vehicles could not operate since both the NLEX (North Luzon Expressway) and SLEX (South Luzon Expressway) and SCTEX (Subic, Clark & Tarlac Expressway) were flooded. Banks and stock exchanges were not operational either. Many lives perished. Millions worth of properties were inundated. Agricultural crops were lost. It has been a great disaster.

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Ten things that they should stop doing to labor – Atty JBJ

August 08, 2012   Patnubay Manila   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

If this administration is serious in promoting social justice and in protecting labor, which are Constitutional mandates, then it should look into these ten things that are currently creating more problems, instead of providing solutions. First, the government should stop marketing our people for deployment to other countries, instead of laying the basis for job creation in the domestic labor market. Today, government agencies, while projecting the politically correct public policy of giving choices to our labor sector, are by acts, pushing our workers to foreign job market. They should stop walking their talk.

Second, the government should stop tolerating the education sector, especially the diploma mills, from mindlessly offering courses that are irrelevant to the socio-economic needs of our country. Government should stop being non-committal to the lack of

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Too much ado about child labor – Atty JBJ

July 14, 2012   Patnubay Online   No comments

Too much ado about child labor
by: Atty JB Jimenez
Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

Is child labor really that big deal of a national problem that our labor officials and their underlings should be spending a lot of time, effort and money trying to make it appear bigger than unemployment, underemployment or child trafficking. With all due respect to the well-meaning advocates against this so-called national menace, the labor front believes that child labor has many redeeming values that, to our mind, far outweigh the alleged pernicious effects of this phenomenon, if any. We firmly believe that there is nothing wrong when children are made to work within the capacity of their physical, mental and emotional make-up. It is our well-considered view, without fear of any plausible contradiction, that in the long run, child labor can even be good for the nation and for the people.

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What labor really expects from the SONA – Atty JBJ

July 04, 2012   Patnubay Manila   No comments

What labor really expects from the SONA 
by: Atty JB Jimenez
Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

Based on his past two SONAs, labor is not really expecting too much from the President this time. The nation is facing just too many problems both in the international and the local fronts. The escalating heat in the Scarborough Shoal poses a very serious challenge to the ability of this government to defend our territorial integrity. The rising crimes and the recurrent criminality in the forms of kidnapping, robberies, murders and the worsening  drug problems, which reportedly involve many police officers and men,  have reached such alarming proportion that even the name of Senator Ping Lacson is being floated around to solve the menace as a supercop and crime czar.

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Between food and freedom, jobs and justice – (Ang Kalayaan para kay Atty JBJ)

June 12, 2012   Patnubay Online   No comments

Source: DIRECT FROM THE LABOR FRONT By Atty Josephus Jimenez

We are about to celebrate our Independence Day once again. But there are millions of Filipinos who are jobless, homeless and hopeless. Are these poor people really free? What do they care about political issues like the sovereignty of the Republic, if there is no assurance of food for their family today? What matters most to them is to have food and let the elite argue about freedom, to get a job and let the rich talk about justice. The poor are even willing to accept dangerous, difficult, dirty, degrading and deceptive jobs if such would assure them a kilo of rice and a can of sardines.

The poor do not mind at all if the Chinese would take possession of the Scarborough Shoal, for even in uncontested territories, these marginalized people do not even have a few square meters of land where to build their dwelling. The poor do not care about international

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