SMC subsidiary company signs MOU with DOLE-7

CEBU, Philippines - In order to sustain an environment that would provide good working conditions for its workers, SMC Shipping and Lighterage Corporation-Cebu, a subsidiary company of the San Miguel Corporation Group of Companies, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Labor and Employment-7.

Around 40 subcontractors of the SMCSL inked an agreement, together with SMC-GC, with DOLE-7, under the Kapatiran-Wise TAV Program, on their compliance with labor laws, particularly on General Labor Standards and Occupational Safety and Health Standards.

Huan Shek Chan, Visayas-Mindanao manager who represented the SMC-GC, the mother company, encouraged subcontractors to take on the challenge of always being compliant with labor laws in the work place.

After the MOU signing, SMCSL and its subcontractors will have to be assessed by DOLE’s Labor Laws Compliance Officers, as part of the process.

DOLE-7 acting regional director Exequiel Sarcauga, who served as witness during the MOU signing, assured the subcontractors that DOLE has already shifted to developmental approach.

“We don’t want you antagonized because of our programs so we made sure that our approaches are reformed and changed. We will have to work together. If there are deficiencies noted, then we will help and assist you correct them,” he said in a statement.

He added that DOLE owes SMC a lot, in terms of fostering tripartism, reiterating that the company has been instrumental in unveiling its Labor Laws Compliance Marker with Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz in 2014.

According to Sarcauga, DOLE always makes SMC as an example of a company which believes that giving correct wages and incentives will help workers become more productive. SMC, he said, is an instrument to make other companies compliant.

“We are happy to see workers become happy at work because of DOLE interventions. We hope that we will be able to work together and to look at it from an overall point of view wherein everyone is benefited and no one is left out,” Sarcauga said.

The Kapatiran WISE-TAV Para sa Mas Ligtas, Malusog, at Produktibong Manggagawa, he said, is a flagship public-partnership program of DOLE anchored on ILO’s Work Improvement in Small Enterprises Program, whose action-oriented approach has long proven to link productivity and product quality to safer and better working conditions.

The program, according to him, encourages companies to become fully compliant with general labor standards and OSH standards, as well as with other labor laws.  (FREEMAN)