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Wednesday, September 17, 2003
City employees set mass actions v. mayor
By Dante M. Fabian
ANGELES CITY -- Some rank-and file employees of the City Government will launch Wednesday a series of mass actions to pressure Mayor Carmelo F. Lazatin into implementing the local government's obligations to them under the Collective Negotiating Agreement (CNA).
Isabel P. Ruiz, Association of Government Employees for a New and Dynamic Angeles City (Agenda) president, said the protest actions are embodied in a resolution approved by their members in a controversial general assembly held Tuesday.
Ruiz said the general assembly approved and authorized the staging of a series of concerted activities effective Wednesday.
She said that beginning Wednesday, Agenda members will hold pickets, rallies and noise barrages until the city mayor satisfactorily complies with his contractual obligations to them.
Joey Pring, Agenda vice president, said they will carry on with their protest actions until the City Government pays them the GMA bonus, which had been due employees on December 15, 2002 yet.
He said they will not stop their protests until the release of benefits provided for under the CAN, including their signing bonus, rice allowances, birthday packages, dental assistance and monetization of leave.
The workers, according to Pring, are also calling for the implementation of the CNA provision on regularization of casual employees who have served the City Government for an aggregate period of 5 years.
Ruiz said the mass actions were approved in a resolution protesting Lazatin's alleged unlawful, malicious, flagrant, and repeated violations of the CNA and continuing acts of interference, coercion and restraint on the employees' constitutional right to self-organization, freedom of expression and peaceful and concerted activities.
She claimed that in a meeting last February, Lazatin voluntarily agreed to pay all the employees their P5,000 GMA bonus and said he had allocated funds for these in Supplemental Budget 1 that he would submit to the City Council for approval.
Last March 31, the city treasurer had certified to the availability of funds amounting to P7,200,000 to be appropriated for the GMA bonus of the employees.
"Mayor Lazatin, however, reneged on his undertaking by deliberately and maliciously omitting this promised appropriation in the SB-1, and again deliberately and maliciously excluding it from the SB-2 despite his assurance that he would finally include it in the latter supplemental budget," she said.
Agenda said all these constitute gross violation of the CNA and other contractual obligations and therefore amount to unfair labor practice.
Agenda's general assembly Tuesday became the subject of a controversy that added fire to the animosity between the group and the executive department.
Agenda accused Lazatin of coercing and restraining or preventing its members from holding the general assembly by ordering all department heads to subject to administrative action the employees under their supervision if they fail to report for work.
Ruiz said this is despite the fact that the executive had earlier consented to the holding of the general assembly and assurances that the letter sent by Agenda to the executive office had already substantially complied with the notice requirement stipulated in their CNA.
Ruiz said that Lazatin also employed tactics designed to discourage and dissuade members from attending the general assembly.
She denounced attempts to make it appear that a provision of the CNA to hold only one general assembly per year and asserted that since Agenda had held a general assembly last February, it is no longer entitled to hold one on Tuesday.
Section 1 Article IV of the CNA states: "The City Government authorizes the holding by the association of regular board meetings once a month any day from the 7th to the 10th or from the 24th to the 27th of the month at 3:30 p.m. and a general assembly once a year at 1 p.m., the exact date of which shall be notified to the Office of the Mayor, and a special meeting, when there is urgency. Notice of the meeting/s shall be sent to the Office of the Mayor. If there is a need for additional general assembly, request for holding of the same shall be made to the Office of the Mayor."
Until last Monday night, the holding of the general assembly was still the subject of negotiations that also involved Civil Service Commission (CSC) officials.
The Agenda finally prevailed and pushed through with the planned general assembly despite the position of Atty. Anicia De Lima that this will be starting at 1 p.m. Tuesday as against the Agenda plan to begin this at 8 a.m. of the same day.
Agenda also opposed the request of De Lima to allow CSC officials to attend and observe the proceedings during the general assembly.
However, Ruiz protested and asserted that the presence of the CSC officials in the general assembly will be a direct interference in the affairs of the organization.
Ruiz said they had informed the members of the scheduled 8 a.m. general assembly so that it was already impossible to disseminate the change in schedule to 1 p.m. Sun.Star Pampanga |
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