Short-term workers

On paper, Manpower Phils. has been in business only since May 2000. In practice, however, the company has been operational for much, much longer. It was known as Prime Manpower Resources Development, Inc. for 21 years before it was acquired by Manpower, a Fortune 500 company in the United States.

Like its 3,900 offices in 61 other countries, Manpower Phils. hires workers on a temporary basis who are then assigned to other companies for a specific period of time.

"We have a data bank of temporary workers with specific skills," said country manager Fe Palileo "Each of the workers in our data bank has been interviewed and his/her skills has been assessed. As a matter of policy, we do not discriminate in terms of gender, age and religion but only in terms of skills."

When a client calls in for workers with particular skills, Palileo and her staff go to the data bank and match the workers with the needed skills. If the skills of the workers are not a perfect match to the requirements of the client, Manpower pays for the workers to undergo additional training.

Right now, Manpower provides contractual workers for outsourced backroom operations such as data encoding, clerical and filing work as well as for light industrials such as packaging and sorting.

Perceptions

"Manpower is not a recruitment agency," said Palileo, who admitted the Philippines and other Asian countries have not yet fully accepted contracted work as a legitimate form of employment. On their own, some companies hire contractual workers to get around laws that detail the legal benefits that workers are entitled to. Labor unions also oppose the hiring of contractual workers, who cannot increase their ranks.

"Our mother company has been in this business since 1948. We consider ourselves a good employer. We pay our workers what is their due. We give them the benefits as mandated by law. We train them so they can upgrade their competencies and earn more," said Palileo.

The company has a $12-million general liability fund, $1 million of which is covered by the US head office and the balance by the local office. The fund is used when a Manpower employee meets an accident while on assignment.

Perhaps a better indicator of how Manpower treats its workers is the company’s Tiffany Award, which is given to workers who have stayed with the company for at least one year. The award – a necklace – is proudly worn by many of Manpower’s workers given work assignments in other companies.