Press Release
February 1, 2010
Members of the party-list group Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) picketed the main office of the Social Security System in protest at the plan of SSS President Romulo Neri to channel P12.5 billion of SSS funds to the economic stimulus package of the Arroyo administration.
Chanting “Neri, Gloria: Hands off our funds!” and “Additional workers benefits not more GMA projects is the right stimulus plan!” some 50 workers from PM gathered at the East Avenue office of SSS around 10 a.m.
Renato Magtubo, PM chairperson, argued that “It is not just illegal but illegitimate for Neri to divert billions in SSS funds to infrastructure projects that will benefit capitalists first and workers last, if at all. A pro-labor stimulus plan must put money in workers hands through additional SSS benefits for workers, including an unemployment subsidy for displaced SSS members.”
The group also revealed that they are studying the option of filing a class suit of SSS members against Neri for the alleged fund diversion. The workers also voiced support for Senate Resolution 850 directing the committee on government corporations and public enterprises to investigate the plan to channel the P12.5 billion for the government’s "economic resiliency plan."
Among the protesters were workers who are SSS members with complaints about their benefits. Among them is Tomas Piroy, a resident of Tanza, Cavite but who works as a security guard in Paranaque. Piroy recently secured a loan from SSS but objects to the P200 service charge automatically deducted from his loan. “The SSS is our money yet we are charged for accessing our benefits,” Piroy stated.
Dennis Sequena, leader of PM in Cavite raised the prospect that due to the lack of transparency and corruption in the administration, “Workers funds might be used for the electoral campaign of the regime-backed candidates if not of GMA herself in Pampanga. Neri is apparently confused that as administrator of the SSS money his real boss is the workers who have put their hard-earned money in the insurance fund not GMA who wants to dip her hands in the piggy bank of the working class.”
He added that “If instead of funding infrastructure projects, the P12.5 billion in SSS funds is used as unemployment subsidy for workers laid off due to the economic crisis, then some 200,000 will benefit. This will be enough to cover the 40,000 laid off, according to the conservative figures of the DOLE, since the start of the global recession and the tens of thousands more to be displaced in the coming months and years as the economic crisis shows no sign of abating.” PM is pushing for an unemployment subsidy at the minimum wage rate of P10,000 for up to six months for workers who are recently displaced.
Showing posts with label Neri resign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neri resign. Show all posts
Monday, February 1, 2010
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Labor group asks SSS to allot more funds for displaced workers from increased revenue
PRESS RELEASE
21 April 2009
The militant labor party-list group, Partido ng Manggagawa (PM), is urging the Social Security System (SSS) to allocate more funds for displaced workers given the reported increase in the pension fund’s income last year.
SSS Executive Vice-President Horacio T. Templo declared the other day that the pension fund’s net revenue reached P22.8 billion in 2008 from P12.1 billion in the previous year, or an increase of 88 percent. The increase, according to Templo, mainly came from the sale of its shares in Meralco and Banco De Oro. Membership contribution also rose 11.4%, from P61.8 billion to P68.9 billion. In effect, the fund’s return on investment rose to 10.9% from 8% in 2007.
Labor first
PM chair Renato Magtubo said this is welcome news for labor, yet this can only be true if benefits from this rise in revenue redound directly to the real owners of the fund – the private sector employees who are now reeling from the impact of the global economic crisis.
In the face of the raging economic crisis, the labor leader challenged the government to promote a “labor first policy” not only to protect labor rights during crisis but also to serve as a policy guide for the better and appropriate use of our resources.
“For so many years we workers are not even aware of how our pension fund is being managed and where our contributions are being invested. Many times we hear of reports that the fund is being used to bail out private firms. Perhaps this is our turn to demand that our fund be used to bailout the workers in the face of the raging economic crisis,” stressed Magtubo.
Earlier, the SSS contributed some P12.5-B to President Arroyo’s P330-B ‘stimulus package’, which is most likely to be used, as feared by many sectors, for patronage politics.
Reversal of “no loan policy”
Magtubo added that Templo’s disclosure effectively reversed the fund’s previous pronouncements that it has run out of money to extend assistance to workers affected by the crisis.
It is recalled that early last month, SSS Chair Romulo Neri, defended the fund’s “no loan policy” for laid-off workers, saying that the 10% mandated ceiling for benefits has already been breached. Neri was only forced to reverse his position when the Partido ng Manggagawa protested the callousness of such a policy. A week later, the SSS announced that it has allocated P500 million for displaced workers.
But the labor group said the P500 million window is surely not enough to mitigate the impact of massive job loss. Only about 50,000 displaced workers can avail of the fund if they are provided a P10,000 one-month unemployment subsidy. The labor department, however, said that some 40,000 workers lost their jobs since October while over a hundred thousand are either affected by reduced work hours and wage cuts. And the number is still growing especially in the export zones.
PM insists that direct subsidy or loan facilities for displaced SSS members be extended to at least six months, as their transition to finding new jobs takes longer due to the deepening economic crisis. NEDA Director-General Ralph Recto estimated the cost of this measure to about P7 billion.
Extending unemployment subsidy/insurance to displaced workers is one of the demands in the “bailout package for workers and the poor” advocated by the Partido ng Manggagawa. Other demands include a tax refund, reform and expansion of public employment program, extension of healthcare coverage, and moratorium on demolitions and evictions.
The group is also demanding the reversal of liberalization, deregulation and privatization policies, which it claims, were responsible for the country’s chronic underdevelopment.
PM, along with other labor groups, are set to launch series of protest actions including a “Lakbayan” to press for those demands leading to a bigger Labor Day action on May 1.
21 April 2009
The militant labor party-list group, Partido ng Manggagawa (PM), is urging the Social Security System (SSS) to allocate more funds for displaced workers given the reported increase in the pension fund’s income last year.
SSS Executive Vice-President Horacio T. Templo declared the other day that the pension fund’s net revenue reached P22.8 billion in 2008 from P12.1 billion in the previous year, or an increase of 88 percent. The increase, according to Templo, mainly came from the sale of its shares in Meralco and Banco De Oro. Membership contribution also rose 11.4%, from P61.8 billion to P68.9 billion. In effect, the fund’s return on investment rose to 10.9% from 8% in 2007.
Labor first
PM chair Renato Magtubo said this is welcome news for labor, yet this can only be true if benefits from this rise in revenue redound directly to the real owners of the fund – the private sector employees who are now reeling from the impact of the global economic crisis.
In the face of the raging economic crisis, the labor leader challenged the government to promote a “labor first policy” not only to protect labor rights during crisis but also to serve as a policy guide for the better and appropriate use of our resources.
“For so many years we workers are not even aware of how our pension fund is being managed and where our contributions are being invested. Many times we hear of reports that the fund is being used to bail out private firms. Perhaps this is our turn to demand that our fund be used to bailout the workers in the face of the raging economic crisis,” stressed Magtubo.
Earlier, the SSS contributed some P12.5-B to President Arroyo’s P330-B ‘stimulus package’, which is most likely to be used, as feared by many sectors, for patronage politics.
Reversal of “no loan policy”
Magtubo added that Templo’s disclosure effectively reversed the fund’s previous pronouncements that it has run out of money to extend assistance to workers affected by the crisis.
It is recalled that early last month, SSS Chair Romulo Neri, defended the fund’s “no loan policy” for laid-off workers, saying that the 10% mandated ceiling for benefits has already been breached. Neri was only forced to reverse his position when the Partido ng Manggagawa protested the callousness of such a policy. A week later, the SSS announced that it has allocated P500 million for displaced workers.
But the labor group said the P500 million window is surely not enough to mitigate the impact of massive job loss. Only about 50,000 displaced workers can avail of the fund if they are provided a P10,000 one-month unemployment subsidy. The labor department, however, said that some 40,000 workers lost their jobs since October while over a hundred thousand are either affected by reduced work hours and wage cuts. And the number is still growing especially in the export zones.
PM insists that direct subsidy or loan facilities for displaced SSS members be extended to at least six months, as their transition to finding new jobs takes longer due to the deepening economic crisis. NEDA Director-General Ralph Recto estimated the cost of this measure to about P7 billion.
Extending unemployment subsidy/insurance to displaced workers is one of the demands in the “bailout package for workers and the poor” advocated by the Partido ng Manggagawa. Other demands include a tax refund, reform and expansion of public employment program, extension of healthcare coverage, and moratorium on demolitions and evictions.
The group is also demanding the reversal of liberalization, deregulation and privatization policies, which it claims, were responsible for the country’s chronic underdevelopment.
PM, along with other labor groups, are set to launch series of protest actions including a “Lakbayan” to press for those demands leading to a bigger Labor Day action on May 1.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Workers picket SSS to protest policy of “no loan for displaced workers”
Press Release
March 11, 2009
Members of the labor groups Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) and United Cavite Workers Association trooped to the main office of the SSS for a picket-protest against the SSS Administrator Romulo Neri’s declaration that the social security fund will not release loans to laid-off workers. They also reiterated the call for Neri’s resignation for “not just being hard-fisted with SSS funds but being cold-hearted to the workers.”
Renato Magtubo, PM chairperson argued that “SSS loans to the displaced is more justified than lending P12.5 billion of the workers fund for government infrastructure projects that the World Bank has exposed as graft-ridden. And since Neri cannot tell the truth about the NBN ZTE deal, he can hardly be trusted to reveal the real condition of SSS funds.”
The protesters brought a life preserver as a symbol of the importance of SSS as a safety net and social protection for workers. “At the precise moment when workers are struggling against drowning in the crisis, Neri punctures the life preserver of SSS loans that is one way to save the displaced,” Magtubo insisted.
Among the protesters was Elisabeth Sayson, a garment worker with the Ultimate Dream Fashion in the Cavite Economic Zone in Rosario who had completed paying 36 months in contributions but was denied a loan since she had been dismissed from work this month. “Workers in export zones usually complain of capitalists who do not remit deductions from our wages. Now we have to fight SSS itself for denying us the right to avail of our very own money that we had entrusted to it,” Sayson criticized.
PM opposes the SSS position that displaced workers can only avail of emergency loans if they continue membership as “voluntary members.” Sayson argued that “How can we continue contributing to the SSS when we are out of work and without an income. We are ready to contribute to the SSS if the government gives an unemployment subsidy to retrenched workers until we can find a new job. If not then the government must subsidize the employee and employer contributions to SSS so that our benefits will not be cut off.”
The group also declared that the summer jobs being offered by SSS can complement but cannot be a replacement for loans for displaced workers. The protesters say that 2,000 summer jobs are not a safety net but a band aid solution given that tens of thousands of workers and counting have been laid off.
Magtubo reiterated their position that “The SSS must open its books for an audit by representatives of organized labor other than those already sitting in its board. Congress should also study an amendment to the SSS law in order to lift the 10 per cent ceiling and the necessity of a government infusion of money to the workers’ fund so it can provide benefits for the estimated hundreds of thousands of workers that will be displaced. The 10 per cent limit should not be a concrete ceiling but a movable elevator that can be adjusted as the conditions require.”
“We sacrificed part of their daily pay for social security contributions in preparation for a rainy day. Now is that rainy day. In fact this is bound to be a rainy season. To deny workers this social protection in their hour of need is cruel,” Sayson stated.
March 11, 2009
Members of the labor groups Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) and United Cavite Workers Association trooped to the main office of the SSS for a picket-protest against the SSS Administrator Romulo Neri’s declaration that the social security fund will not release loans to laid-off workers. They also reiterated the call for Neri’s resignation for “not just being hard-fisted with SSS funds but being cold-hearted to the workers.”
Renato Magtubo, PM chairperson argued that “SSS loans to the displaced is more justified than lending P12.5 billion of the workers fund for government infrastructure projects that the World Bank has exposed as graft-ridden. And since Neri cannot tell the truth about the NBN ZTE deal, he can hardly be trusted to reveal the real condition of SSS funds.”
The protesters brought a life preserver as a symbol of the importance of SSS as a safety net and social protection for workers. “At the precise moment when workers are struggling against drowning in the crisis, Neri punctures the life preserver of SSS loans that is one way to save the displaced,” Magtubo insisted.
Among the protesters was Elisabeth Sayson, a garment worker with the Ultimate Dream Fashion in the Cavite Economic Zone in Rosario who had completed paying 36 months in contributions but was denied a loan since she had been dismissed from work this month. “Workers in export zones usually complain of capitalists who do not remit deductions from our wages. Now we have to fight SSS itself for denying us the right to avail of our very own money that we had entrusted to it,” Sayson criticized.
PM opposes the SSS position that displaced workers can only avail of emergency loans if they continue membership as “voluntary members.” Sayson argued that “How can we continue contributing to the SSS when we are out of work and without an income. We are ready to contribute to the SSS if the government gives an unemployment subsidy to retrenched workers until we can find a new job. If not then the government must subsidize the employee and employer contributions to SSS so that our benefits will not be cut off.”
The group also declared that the summer jobs being offered by SSS can complement but cannot be a replacement for loans for displaced workers. The protesters say that 2,000 summer jobs are not a safety net but a band aid solution given that tens of thousands of workers and counting have been laid off.
Magtubo reiterated their position that “The SSS must open its books for an audit by representatives of organized labor other than those already sitting in its board. Congress should also study an amendment to the SSS law in order to lift the 10 per cent ceiling and the necessity of a government infusion of money to the workers’ fund so it can provide benefits for the estimated hundreds of thousands of workers that will be displaced. The 10 per cent limit should not be a concrete ceiling but a movable elevator that can be adjusted as the conditions require.”
“We sacrificed part of their daily pay for social security contributions in preparation for a rainy day. Now is that rainy day. In fact this is bound to be a rainy season. To deny workers this social protection in their hour of need is cruel,” Sayson stated.
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