TUCP Slams DOE Sec. Petilla for Inutility on Brownouts

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) chided Energy Secretary Petilla for his being inability to address brownouts and increasing electricity rates.

The group, instead, proposes a declaration of national emergency on power so that the country will cease being a victim of the vicious cycle.

TUCP described the “red alert” status issued by the Department of Energy, warning as to insufficient supply this weekend as the tip of the iceberg.

“Our ship-of-state is sailing full speed ahead, in a collision course with the twin -peak iceberg of lack of power and MERALCO’s never-ending price increases. The DOE is placing our economic take-off at risk and is setting the stage for an impending economic meltdown,” said TUCP Executive Director Luis Corral.

“The TUCP requests that the DOE Secretary to call a spade a spade and advice President Aquino that there is now an emergency in the power sector, requiring a multi-agency response with clear directions from the President, “said Corral.

The labor center in a two-hour audience with President Aquino this April 30 requested the President to declare an emergency and establish a multi-agency group under him to address the power crisis. The DOE instead set up a task force study group which the TUCP and labor coalition Nagkaisa..

Corral laid the responsibility with the DOE for not laying down clear policy parameters and accompanying strategies to ensure secure power supply or to define competitive rates.

“The DOE doesn’t have these two items which can be technically defined by engineers, financial analysts and industry practitioners. In the absence of crisis leadership, electric power policy is veering from one Supreme Court case, still unresolved, to a new Supreme Court case, from ERC caps on a supposedly free-market activity to a more complex two price-cap mechanism and now to a pitiful DOE Task Force on Power Rates whose arcane and complex debates are further obscuring one central fact: That power Philippine Power Policy is in this climate of drift is firmly in the hands of a socially irresponsible and financially greedy power generation sector,” he explained.

In the midst of this, consumers are supposed to rely on the oversight of an Energy Regulatory Commission headed by the Napoles-challenged Zeny Ducut,” said TUCP spokesperson Alan Tanjusay.

“While there is a lack of secure and reliable supply, government should step in to put up additional capacity. If bilateral contracts between power distributors and generators will better lower rates and approximate true costs, then suspend the WESM until a technically developed percentage of supply reserve is set up to engender real competition. If there is cheap hydropower available during the rainy season, then run it instead of keeping it as ancillary reserve while the more expensive coal and oil plants are run,” Tanjusay said..

He said this can be done without need of amending EPIRA,” All it takes is Presidential courage to announce an emergency and the need for a national response. Then all the players can be prodded, cajoled and otherwise mobilized to restore sanity to the electricity industry."

The TUCP also called for an end to “blue skies” wishful thinking that somehow the DOE target to increase solar from 50 Megawatts to 500 Megawatts, will ease the burden of the supply deficit.

Solar has at best an efficiency capacity at best of 20%, 500 MW really means 100 MW and that will never be large enough or reliable enough to be base load for large industries. Also, this will be done with a feed-in-tariff that will jack up rates by an average of 18 centavos per kWh for the next 20 years.

"Solar seems to be the flavor of the month, Two years ago the flavor was privatizing the power barges and last year it was pushing generation sets. In Mindanao DOE could have rehabilitated the Agus Pulangui hydro-electric complex as demanded by Mindanawons, they did not , so the UP experts are predicting 200 plus days of brownouts for Mindanao next year. In the meantime the DOE rushed implementation of the Retail Competition and Open Access program which we fear will further drive up rates for the captive residential households of MERALCO,” Corral added.

TUCP attributes the deflated 5.9% GDP growth rate in the first quarter as being driven by insecurity of businesses in our power supply. TUCP also attributed the inflation rate of 4.7% in May, the highest in 30 months, on the spiraling cost of power. They said energy officials preen with confidence about the manageability of our power crisis and yet we are made to pay for their failure of political leadership.

The labor group said the country is hit by the triple whammy of spiraling costs of goods and commodities, an interruptible load program that allows Robinson's and SM to power up their generators to energize the lights and air-conditioning of their malls when there are NCR brownouts and be able to charge it to MERALCO customers, and now the real threat of retrenchments because businesses are losing because of no power and high power costs.

TUCP has warned that the ASEAN Integration come 2015 requires a clear energy roadmap. "A wrong-headed energy roadmap will be fatal to all other industry roadmaps. If there is no power, there will be no investors and there will be no jobs," Tanjusay said.- Bohol Standard

TUCP demands tax breaks for workers

MANILA, Philippines - Labor group Trade Union Congress of the Philippines said on Friday said it high time for government to help workers cope with the rising prices of basic commodities and cost of basic services by giving tax breaks.

The TUCP has presented the proposal during the pre-labor day breakfast dialogue with labor groups on April 29. The proposal seeks to enhance the fringe de minimis tax benefits as a way for executive government to help workers cope with soaring prices of basic commodities and cost of services.

The group still awaits for feedback from President Benigno Aquino III.

“It’s been more than a month since this tax break proposal was shown with the President (Aquino) and there has been no response from him since then. His executive action on this one will put more disposable income into workers’ pocket and improve their purchasing power in light of inflation,”Gerard Seno, executive vice president of the Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP), said.

TUCP and its 48 other labor organizations under the coalition called Nagkaisa recommended during the dialogue with Aquino to revise the current version of the de minimis benefits enjoyed by thousands of workers to improve the take home pay of workers.

Not subject to any tax, the de minimis benefits are facilities or privileges given or offered by an employer to its employees as a means of encouraging productivity in the workforce. It also promotes company goodwill and appreciation to its employees.

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Seno said the among the proposals of the group is to revise the monetized unused vacation leave credits from the current 10 days to 15 days, retain the monetized value of vacation and sick leave credits paid to government officials and employees, and to raise medical cash allowance to dependents from P750 to P1,500 per employee per month.

He added that TUCP and Nagkaisa are also pushing for Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares to stop taxing the minimum wage negotiated out of the collective bargaining agreement.

“We want BIR to impose tax only on the incremental amount and not the entire amount itself,” Seno said.

The TUCP is supporting other tax relief measures pending at the Senate and the House of Representatives aimed at lowering income tax rate from 32 percent to 15 percent by 2015 and from 15 per cent to 13 percent by 2016 and from 13 percent to 10 percent by 2017. - Dennis Carcamo Philstar

Solon seeks inclusion of labor education in college subjects

A lawmaker is calling for the inclusion of labor education in the college curriculum to make students aware of their rights and privileges as workers as well as of their responsibilities to society.

Rep. Raymond Democrito C. Mendoza (Party-list, TUCP) said it is imperative for college students who will eventually join the labor force as workers and employees to have knowledge about labor rights, worker's welfare and benefits, among others.

Mendoza filed House Bill 4399, which mandates the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to develop a mandatory subject or course on labor education that will be separately offered together with existing subjects in the college curricula.

The bill refers to labor education as the teaching of labor rights, worker's welfare and benefits, the core labor standards, labor laws and regulations, national and global labor situation as well as labor market concerns.

"Labor market concerns include job matching for career guidance, labor issues, overseas work and related problems, decent work and decent wages and other topics related to labor and employment," Mendoza explained.

The party-list solon said the current curriculum in the tertiary level does not equip fresh graduates or the new entrants to the labor force with the basic knowledge of their rights.

"Knowledge of labor rights and standards is critical for college students to understand and use for their own advantage much more for those who opt to work overseas where they are governed by foreign laws and are away from home, their families and their own government and are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation," Mendoza explained.

He further added that with trade liberalization and cut throat competition, violations of the internationally accepted core labor standards such as security of tenure, collective bargaining, the right to strike, and the need for workers to receive a decent wage have become more prevalent regardless of a worker's educational attainment or academic background.

Mendoza said violation of workers' rights and core labor standards denigrate the dignity of labor and that the massive practice of contractualization and labor-only-contracting also adds to the woes of workers who continue to be marginalized despite their great contributions to economic and social development.

"Labor education of this sort is absolutely critical for workers to empower themselves and thereby provide them the knowledge to protect themselves from being cheated or taken advantage of by employers or recruiters in a globalized economy where there are no longer secure jobs, where the privatization phenomenon places even the jobs of public sector workers at risk and where the concept of decent work is under constant siege," Mendoza said.

TUCP to gov’t: Pay us back while we’re alive, not after we die

THE Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) is stupefied over President Aquino’s issuance of Presidential Executive Order 167 approving the increase in funeral and disability benefits for both public and private sector workers for as long as government institutions can finance them.

“The act of President Aquino issuing an executive order raising funeral and pension benefits as long as government has the money is a cold and surprising presidential prank for workers looking forward to a restful weekend after a week of hard work. Pinipersonal na yata ng pangulo kaming mga manggagawa matapos magtrabaho upang buhayin ang kanyang pamilya at paunlarin ang ating bansa,” said TUCP spokesperson Alan Tanjusay.

“Workers desperately need cash right now. We are desperate for a living wage and decent social protection benefits in raising and educating their children, and caring for our elderly. We demand government to pay us back for building our nation’s wealth during our lifetime and not after we die or when our bodies gives in,” he stressed adding: “At bakit kailangang hintayin pa na magkapera ang gobyerno at doon lamang magtataas ng pensyon at benepisyo?”

Aquino signed the order on May 26 directing the Employee’s Compensation Commission (ECC) to implement, as soon as they have money, ECC resolutions 13-07-14 and 13-11-37 in July and November 2013 approving the increase in funeral benefits from P10,000 to P20,000 for both private and public sector workers and a 10% across-the-board increase in pension only for the private sector.

In the Labor day dialogue with TUCP and other labor groups last month, labor groups asked Aquino to direct Commissioner Kim Henares to enhance fringe and de minimis benefit tax exemptions and remove government E-VAT on systems loss in the electricity cost as government effort to give workers more disposable income.

The demands are among the eight issues raised by the labor sector for Aquino to act on to improve workers’ well-being. - Journal.com.ph