Tuesday, September 30, 2008 Seares: Firing workers: Edu’s gripe By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
CEBU City Councilor Edu Rama has one complaint against newspapers but it isn’t about what reporters and editors do.
It’s about printing ads that tell the public the employer had dismissed an employee. Journalists have nothing to do with advertising.
But Edu’s complaint was printed in the hard news section. And I was the editor-lawyer who briefed the paper’s marketing people what the ordinance meant.
The law’s intent is laudable. It aims to protect the dismissed employee’s right, as Edu puts it, “to hold on to whatever is left of his reputation or dignity.”
Still, before he says any newspaper is defying the ordinance, let him re-read the law.
The ordinance penalizes printing of a notice telling the public that an employee “is no longer connected to the employer” without qualifying that he hasn’t committed “an infraction to the employer” that warrants the firing.
What it prohibits is publishing notices of dismissal or termination of employment.
What aren’t covered
It doesn’t cover notices (a) terminating the employee’s authority to transact business, which may just be a change of job description, or (b) about the employee’s having gone Awol, which distresses most employers.
They aren’t dismissals and therefore not covered by the ordinance. What the law doesn’t expressly prohibit can’t be impliedly prohibited. The ordinance being penal, it’s strictly interpreted against the lawgiver.
Perhaps Edu can recall the ordinance and toughen it by plugging the holes.
While at it, he can also make its language clearer to allow no room for doubt on what acts it punishes.
