EDITORIAL - Goodbye, Union Carbide

After 40 years of operation, Energizer Philippines is shutting down its plant in barangay Jagobiao in Mandaue City. The curtain call is scheduled on May 7. The date cannot be any sadder. It is the day before the Mandaue City fiesta which falls on May 8 each year. It is as if the sadness cannot wait for one more day of merriment.

About a hundred employees are expected to lose their jobs as a result of the closure. It is a small number really, the plant once having employed people by the hundreds in round-the-clock shifts. But the changing fortunes of time have gradually taken their toll on what used to be one of the icons of Mandaue City’s march to progress.

First set up as Union Carbide Philippines in 1971, it was one of the economic showcases of the then fledgling city, which was founded in 1969. Perhaps, the only other giant that can match and eclipse its stature as an economic driving force and employment status symbol in Mandaue City during its heyday was, but of course, San Miguel Corporation.

Like San Miguel and that other giant of industry called Atlas Mining in Toledo City, Union Carbide, as the company continues to be called by many even to this day, instilled such unique influence on the Cebuano psyche that to be employed by it drove an employee into a unique circle of privilege that was the envy of many.

Atlas too has gone, also a victim of the changing fortunes of time but whose doom was hastened and sealed by the untenable demands of militant unions. The case of Union Carbide may be different. But the effect is still the same. Its closure will leave a void that will be difficult to fill. Atlas has been resurrected under a different name. But the lost glory cannot be recouped.

The sorry loss of Union Carbide is not merely the loss of a hundred jobs. It is the loss of an icon that has become so much a part of Cebu in general, and Mandaue City in particular. Aside from generating revenues for itself and taxes for the government, it also helped create families and educate generations of children.

In fact, one little known trivia is that the very first emergency rescue unit in Cebu, and arguably the whole Philippines, had its roots in Union Carbide when the then young city of Mandaue acquired from the company an old delivery van and converted it into an emergency vehicle, around which revolved the first highly trained and elite rescue personnel in Cebu and maybe the country.