No to 4-day workweek, TUCP accuses Petilla of transferring power policy failure burden to workers

By TUCP
August 7, 2014

QUEZON CITY – The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) strongly opposes any move that would implement a four-day compressed workweek scheme and daylight savings time to conserve power proposed by Department of Energy Undersecretary Jose Layug Jr. amid the looming power crisis in the country.

“The DOE’s failure to have a policy on power security and competitive rates directly led to this crisis. How dare the DOE now try to impose labor policy? Why will workers sacrificed to answer for the policy failure and lack of forward planning of the Department of Energy? When did workers become the safety net to assure high profits for power generation and Meralco?", said Louie Corral, TUCP executive director.

“And besides, sagad na sa kakatipid ng kuryente ang bawa’t pamilya dahil ito na ang pinakamataas na halaga ng kuryente sa Asia, papano pa sila magtitipid? Have they lost all decency? Is this their idea of the social contract of our government with its people? Their cavalier treatment of the SONA directive to consult and their easy conclusion of who must pay the price speak volume about what we can expect from the both of you during the DOE leadership,” he added.

In this power crisis, all must bear the burden and all must sacrifice but Petilla apparently does not seem to share this sentiment. Instead of time-bound and transparent multi-sectoral consultations, Petilla is very quick to dump the burden on worker while he insensitively undertook negotiations for expensive power barge rentals. Petilla apparently do not understand correct sequencing.

“President Aquino told him during SONA to consult first but he interprets this as "let's make a deal!" he added.

TUCP spokesperson Alan Tanjusay explained that a compressed four-day work week may mean workers will have no overtime for extra hours of work. It will also be stressful directly affecting the health of workers. For daily wage earners, it would mean one day less of wages.

Tanjusay reiterated the call TUCP made with the Nagkaisa labor coalition in April to President Aquino to convene a multi-agency, multi-sectoral task force to generate a national response and work towards solutions-- a clear policy on power supply, price and a coherent strategy out of the crisis.