"Thanks to a stroke of good fortune, the political crisis was overcome and we now have in place a new administration headed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo," ECOP president Donald Dee said in his welcome remarks Thursday in the group’s first general membership meeting this year.
Held at the Dusit Hotel in Makati, the meeting was the group’s first since the ouster of President Joseph Estrada. Among those present were Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas and ECOP chairman Miguel Varela.
"The new ambiance offers us a new and singular opportunity to put our acts together, to address the number one problem of the country – how to jumpstart our sputtering economy," Dee said.
He said the main cause for concern is the macroeconomic picture, where the Philippines posted the second slowest growth among Association of Southeast Asian Nations last year, with gross domestic product at 3.9 percent.
The country is expected to wind up last this year with GDP at 3.8 percent.
This is bad for our competitive position, he said, and even worse for social equity.
Correlating growth with equity, Dee said the picture is alarming because the ability of the economy to generate employment for the labor force is even now on the decline.
Last year, for the first time in a decade, the country’s unemployment rate recorded a high of 11.2 percent, representing 3.5 million unemployed.
At the same time, the annual labor force participation rate posted a decline from 66.4 percent in 1999 to 64.9 percent in 2000.
Considering that the population growth rate is 2.3 percent, possibly the highest in the Asean region, this can only mean that the country’s escalating unemployment leads to more impoverished masses, he said.
This is the reason why one of President Arroyo’s first acts upon assumption to office was to call for an employment summit, he said.
"I should therefore like to appeal to our members, not only to contribute their ideas to address the issues I have earlier mentioned, but also to participate actively in the summit," Dee said.
Another concern Dee mentioned was the radical and cause-oriented groups in civil society and the labor movement whose main political agenda is to denounce globalization and replace it with an inward-looking market, where force of supply and demand would be highly regulated.
"While these cause-oriented groups are active in the labor movement, there is even more need for an employers’ organization like ECOP to engage them in constructive dialogue," Dee said.
The process may be difficult and even distasteful to some, he said, but there is no other effective means except to reach out to the workers and come up with some kind of modus vivendi.
Finally Dee urged all members to attend the largely pro-administration ECOP’s 22nd National Conference of Employers on April 26-27 at the New World Renaissance Hotel, Makati.
With the theme "Breaking New Grounds: Pushing Reforms to Win the Future," the conference provides an appropriate venue for the business community to map out strategies for sustained economic recovery and global competitiveness under a new climate of public and corporate governance.
The conclusions drawn from the conference, which will be embodied in resolutions to be presented to Mrs. Arroyo, will serve as further inputs in the development of ECOP’s strategy, plans and programs.
Meanwhile, Varela said recent developments raised new issues on tripartism, including mandated sectoral representations which need to be addressed by the new leadership at the Department of Labor and Employment.
He said the political crisis caused the breakup of the tripartite structure in labor relations where practically the entire labor movement and several Makati-based business organizations joined the rest of civil society in mass actions and demonstrations against the former president.
An offshoot of this mass action was when organized labor withdrew its representation in the National Tripartite Industrial Peace Council, the highest tripartite advisory and consultative body in the country.
"As a consequence, I foresee adjustments and a lot of mending to be done by the new DOLE leadership," Varela said.
But more than this, it has to address the new dynamics of sectoral representation that have emerged from the political crisis, he said.