Electronics workers in Cavite vote to go on strike

Press Release
May 7, 2010

Workers of Dyna Image Corp. Phils., an electronics export firm in the Cavite Economic Zone in Rosario, voted unanimously to go on strike. The 109 members of the Samahan ng Manggagawa sa Dyna Image Corp. Phils. all voted for a strike yesterday afternoon in a meeting in Rosario that was attended by a representative of the Department of Labor and Employment.

The strike vote came as a result of a deadlock in the preventive mediation conducted by the National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB) in Imus last Wednesday. The union is demanding that management allow more than a hundred workers that have not accepted the separation package to return to work. The workers are proposing that management implement a last in-first out policy as regards the retrenchment of 450 workers, about half of the total workforce.

Dyna Image however did not accede to the compromise proposal and so the union declared a deadlock in the mediation. The union has already filed a notice of strike for unfair labor practice at the NCMB extension office in Imus last April 27. More than a hundred Dyna Image workers practically took over the NCMB extension office in a protest that coincided with the first mediation meeting that day.

“Management is inconsistent in its position that old workers have to go since they need younger employees for new product lines. The remaining workers in the factory are not doing anything that we did not already do and already know how to do,” insisted Virgielita Morite, president of the Dyna Image union.

Dennis Sequena, a leader of the labor party-list Partido ng Manggagawa which is supporting the Dyna Image workers, argued that “The DOLE’s declared policy is to find ways other that retrenchment and for layoffs to be the last option. So why are they giving credence to Dyna Image’s contradictory reasoning?”

Both Morite and Sequena explained that work can be shared by the workers so that no one need to retrenched. “At the moment workers at Dyna Image are working 12 hours straight. This means that the more than a hundred laid off workers can be accommodated back to work by reducing the working day to just 10 hours or less,” Morite clarified.

The Dyna Image union will attend a mediation meeting scheduled for May 12. In the meantime groups supporting them such as PM are planning protests to highlight the plight of the displaced workers. Dyna Image is an electronics firm making parts for cellphone cameras for export and is owned by Taiwanese nationals.