Electronics firm to shut down: Workers renew call for bailout

CEBU, Philippines - Militant labor group Partido ng Manggagawa has reiterated its call for a “workers bailout” as another big electronics firm at the Mactan Export Processing Zone in Lapu-Lapu City is set to shut down its operations.

PM-Cebu spokesman Dennis Derige said Celestica Philippines, Inc. (CPH), a Canadian-owned factory producing various electronics products, will shut down its plant inside MEPZ I on August 31 and relocate its Philippine operations to Thailand. As a result, around 900 employees are expected to lose their jobs.

CPH is formerly a NEC (Nippon Electronics Corporation) site. On April 1, 2004, NTEP (NEC Technologies Philippines) was acquired by Celestica Corporate and given the name CPH.

Derige said that Celestica is closing its Philippine plant and shifting it to Thailand to take advantage of the cheaper price of labor there.

“By concentrating production in its Thailand factory, Celestica is able to maintain if not improve its profit amidst the crisis. However they would be throwing their Filipino workers like dirty rags after benefiting from their labor these past five years or even 10 years if we count from the time that Celestica was still called NEC Technologies Phils.,” Derige said.

With this, PM is calling on the government to backtrack from charter revision and instead focus on the economic recession.

Derige said that the closure of Celestica and the layoff of some 900 workers belie the claim of the Department of Labor and Employment and National Economic Development Authority about a rebound in the electronics industry.

He further said that in the immediate period, the workers of Celestica can live off their above-standard separation pay of 45 days per year of service, but if the workers cannot find another job in the next six months then their living standards will suffer in the medium to long-term period.

“Workers are being made to pay the price of a crisis that is not of their own making,” he said.

 PM has been pushing for a bailout package for workers in the light of “continuous hemorrhage” in jobs in export firms. The bailout includes an unemployment subsidy for displaced workers; tax refund for all wage earners; expansion and reform of the public employment program; extension of health care coverage for displaced workers; and moratorium on demolitions and evictions.

 PM contended that the economy is practically in recession and thus urgent action must be taken. “Government cannot keep on whistling in the dark and being in denial about the recession. Intel closed last December, come August it will be Celestica and in between tens of thousands have lost their jobs and many remain without work.”

According to Derige, an economic revival can only come through a policy reversal and paradigm shift in the national development model wherein the policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization must be stopped. — Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon/WAB (THE FREEMAN)