Arroyo Says : BPO Looking For More Employees
President Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday said a business process outsourcing (BPO) company has denied reports that it had laid off hundreds of Filipino employees and was in fact looking for more workers to hire.
“We checked with that center, Advanced Contact Solutions (ACS), and they totally denied it,” she said in a speech at the launch of the UP-Ayala Land Techno Hub at the University of the Philippines on Friday. According to Ms Arroyo, ACS said it had been receiving calls from other call centers which expressed interest in hiring the laid-off workers.
“But ACS said we’re not laying off anyone, we’re looking for more,” she said. The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines called the attention of the Department of Labor and Employment to the supposed mass layoffs, urging the DOLE to redeploy the displaced workers to other BPOs.
According to TUCP president Ernesto Herrera, the layoffs were prompted by “declining business volumes” for ACS arising from the US recession. Despite forecasts of a gloomy holiday season, the President remained upbeat about the economy and was confident that Filipinos’ resilience would see them through. She said she was leaving for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting in Peru with optimism about the future. The President left yesterday for Los Angeles, where she will meet with the Filipino community, en route to Lima to attend the Apec summit on Nov. 22 and 23.
“We will express to the other leaders of Apec the hope of our people that in seeking common ground on ways to coordinate assistance to our economies, we must do so in a way that puts the interest of the poor and the dispossessed ahead of the rich and the powerful,” she said.
Labor Secretary Marianito Roque on Friday belied reports of layoffs in the export zones and call center industry, but admitted that these sectors have been slowing down because of weak demand from their overseas markets.
What the labor department has observed, he said, were reductions in working hours, particularly in factories operating inside the economic zones.
Roque said he had talked to the human resources manager of ACS and was told that no actual layoffs occurred.
“They lost a client, but the workers will be transferred to another service. They reduced around 100 workers, but that was in April, before the crisis,” he said.
Roque also noted that there were no mass firings in factories and plants inside economic zones, only a reduction of working hours.
Some companies that used to work 26 days a month have cut down to 15 or 16 because overseas demand has not been robust since early this year, Roque said.
“There has been a slowdown since March. There were cuts in the working hours, but the workers were not laid off,” he said.
Roque said the industries that were affected by the global recession were the garments, electronics, wire harness, and automotive sectors.
The militant Partido ng Manggagawa labor group recently claimed that thousands of workers, mostly women, had been displaced after garments and furniture factories in the Cebu and Cavite export zones slashed their production hours and workforce.
Roque said that although industries have been feeling the crunch, there is no danger of it spreading to other industries and affecting more workers.
He said the department is meeting with companies to map out a plan to help those in distress. The meetings will also identify the industries that have been severely affected. Source