Furniture company workers stage strike

CEBU - Terminated workers of furniture firm Giardini del Sole staged a labor strike yesterday after the management reportedly failed to comply with the agreement they have made a few weeks ago.

Primitivo Ginoo Jr., president of the Nagkahiusang Puwersa nga Mamumuo sa Giardini, said that they have totally paralyzed the company’s operation.

Early December of last year, the management of Giardini del Sole opted to temporarily shut down its operation as they were affected much by the onslaught of the global financial crisis especially that the US, their number one client, has no orders for 2009.

Giardini del Sole is a furniture manufacturing and exporting company based in barangay Alang-alang, Mandaue City. It is reputed to be the biggest furniture company in the country.

"After exhausting all avenues for conflict resolution for almost a month, we are obliged to hold the strike in order to win our demand that workers be able to work and earn a living," Ginoo said.

Partido ng Manggagawa spokesman Dennis Derige said that the strike started with around a hundred workers of Giardini del Sole, and PM supporters from and other factories picketing the five gates of the Mandaue-based factory.

Derige said that there was “no violence and untoward incidents as the striking workers convinced the remaining non-union employees and even supervisors for sympathy.”

“This is a strike to preserve jobs. This is a struggle for our families’ right to live. This is a fight for the rights of all workers,” union vice president Eulito Fin, Jr. said.

PM chairman Renato Magtubo, in his expression of support, said that "the strike at Giardini del Sole is the first but will not be the last as he calls on government to heed the workers’ demand for a bailout and subsidy.”

The union is asking that management implement the agreement for work rotation instead of forced leave.

The agreement, Derige said, was forged last January 8 at the National Conciliation and Mediation Board but management has since then refused to execute it.

Giovannie Bosch, owner and president of the company, however said that there is no such agreement as he asked the workers to look for another job.

The union filed a notice of strike last January 22 on the basis of union busting and alleged that management is using the impact of the crisis as an excuse to dismiss all union officers and members.

NPMG members voted 70 for, and none against, the holding of a strike last January 23.

Ginoo added that as a sign of management’s intransigence, they boycotted the meeting called the other day by the NCMB in a last-minute bid to settle the dispute.

He further said that the move of the management is consistent with its hard-line position against allowing union members to return to work on a job sharing scheme. – Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon/MEEV   (THE FREEMAN)