By Leslie D. Venzon
MANILA, April 27 (PNA) — As the country celebrates Labor Day on May 1, the Aquino administration on Monday vowed sustained initiatives that foster constructive labor-management relations and employment.
“We would like to be partners in progress and as much as we’d like the businesses to thrive so that we can employ more and more workers,” said Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda in a Palace press briefing.
Citing data from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Lacierda said the number of strikes per year has been limited to less than 10 since 2010.
In 2014 alone, out of 159 notices of strike and lockout, only two finally pushed through.
The Palace official attributed the improvement to the agency’s efforts in implementing the Single Entry Approach or SEnA, through which filed labor cases go through a 30-day conciliation-mediation period.
Lacierda said the country had also beefed up DOLE’s Bureau of Labor Standards with the goal of ensuring that labor standards and laws were fully complied with by employers.
He stressed that it was a Constitutionally-mandated obligation of the national government to provide protection to the workers.
“We are also very consciously aware and mindful of their need to make sure that the plight of our laborers, our employees are also amply enhanced and protected. So we continue to do that,” Lacierda said.
“Our position is that: We would like to see labor and management as partners in progress not as adversaries,” he added. (PNA)