ANGELES CITY – Distressed workers at a garments company inside the Clark Freeport had sought the assistance of the city alderman tagged as “VM” – vigilant mediaman – during his stint as correspondent of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, to take their cause to concerned authorities.
In response, Councilor Jesus “Jay” Sangil has filed a resolution with the sangguniang panglungsod which was passed on Monday “urging the Clark Development Corp. and the Department of Labor and Employment to look into the alleged unfair labor practices and maltreatment of hundreds of employees at the Smart Shirts (Phils) Inc.”
This, even as Sangil, the long-serving chair of the committee on labor since he assumed office in 2004, was last month stripped of his chairmanship by Vice Mayor Vicenta Vega-Cabigting during an executive session of the council held at her office.
The third-termer Sangil, last month too, filed his candidacy for vice mayor in the 2013 polls, running against the re-electing Cabigting.
An official of the Smart Shirt Workers’ Union reported to Sangil that more than 2,000 of his fellow workers are up in arms against their management, claiming the company is “in a total mess and on the verge of confusion, if not destruction.”
Union members claimed that the management headed by “Jeffrey and Mercedes Gagnon” allegedly refused to recognize the benefits the workers have enjoyed for the last eight years, “particularly the compensation of piece-rate workers.”
Gagnon’s “new formula removed the guaranteed pay if the employee failed to meet the quota,” they told Sangil.
The Smart Shirts management reportedly “refuse to recognize the union and the fulltime status of the union president” and also “refuse to honor the company’s obligations to provide Christmas package and to recognize in writing our HRMO-provided medical and dental benefits.”
“Management has curtailed all the privileges being enjoyed by the workers, even small ones like bringing “baon” to the work areas, which they confiscate under the pretext that they exceed the allowable volume,” the workers lamented. “We are even being denied of our periods of rest.”
Sangil was particularly touched by complaints of the workers of “oppression, maltreatment and utter disregard of our feelings and welfare.”
To the management, the workers claimed, “we are their subjects and not their partners, they are ruthless.”
The union official said “Jeffrey, an American national, and Mercedes, a US citizen of Filipina descent from Batangas started running the company only last October.”
Sangil vowed he would “see this case to its ultimate conclusion, just like all the other labor cases I was privileged to handle.”
As labor committee chair, Sangil was instrumental in the solution of dozens of labor-management disputes.
Among these were the resolution of the 45-day crisis at Golbon garment factory involving 720 workers who were all granted benefits amounting to P42 million; the payment of the salaries of hundreds of employees of an export-import handicraft based in Clark; the deportation of a Japanese employer accused of maltreatment by workers also inside Clark; the resolution of the labor problem of construction, hardware, lumber and hotel and restaurant workers; and the most recent involving a big mall and supermarket employees solved in just three days.
Efforts to contact the Smart Shirts management failed as of press time.
