NLRC, BARMM forge partnership in handling labor cases

COTABATO CITY — The National Labor Relations Commission and the Bangsamoro government shall now together address labor cases in the autonomous region that piled up in the past four years due to devolution issues.

Functions of the NLRC are not devolved to the government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that replaced in 2019 the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao as a result of 22 years of peace talks between Malacañang and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. 

BARMM Labor Minister Muslimin Sema told reporters on Friday the Ministry of Labor and Employment-BARMM is now recognized as a channel for local labor cases that need immediate litigation by offices of the commission in different administrative regions.

“We and NLRC officials agreed, during a meeting in Manila last July 28, that our ministry shall be a conduit for cases to be elevated to the NLRC, cases that our offices in BARMM cities and provinces cannot resolve via diplomatic intercession,” Sema said.

Parties to labor cases in BARMM’s three cities and six provinces need to travel to far cities outside where there are NLRC offices that can extend to them legal interventions.

Officials of business business blocs were quoted in radio reports on Friday as saying that they are grateful to the MOLE-BARMM and to the acting NLRC chairperson, Cecily Coching, for having forged a partnership that can hasten the resolution of labor cases in the autonomous region.

“This for us is something very positive,” the entrepreneur-lawyer Ronald Hallid Dimacisil Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, told reporters.