DAVAO CITY – Faculty members and non-teaching personnel of the Holy Cross of Davao College protested Monday the new guidelines for employees which they say violates the collective bargaining agreements (CBA) of two labor unions in the school, namely the Holy Cross of Davao College Faculty Union (HCDCFU-ADLO-KMU) and the union of non-teaching personnel Holy Cross of Davao College Employees Association (HCDCEA-FFW).
More than a hundred teaching and non-teaching personnel gathered outside the school after the school administration endorsed the new Employees Guideline (EG) to the school’s Board of Trustees without the ratification from the employees.
Ruel Socrates Luayon, faculty union president who had been teaching HCDC for the last 27 years, said the new guidelines contained the procedure of hearing grievances concerning school employees.
According to the newest revision of the EG, the Management pronounces its decision to the case and implements its sanction before the grievance procedure may pursue.
Luayon said there will be an EG committee who will handle the case, which is created by the Management.
“So mawala ang impartiality karon sa committee tungod kay influenced man siya sa Human Resource Manager ug sa Vice President for Administration (Impartiality will be lost since the committee is influenced by the school’s Human Resource Manager and the Vice President for Administration),” he said.
“This is in direct opposition to the CBA, which stipulates a grievance mechanism that will provide a step by step process which an employee must follow to get his or her complaint addressed satisfactorily before any sanction is meted out,” said Luayon.
“We object the Administration’s unilateral and undemocratic method in passing policies that destroy the tenurial protections put in place in our CBA. The Administation wants to sanction first an employee before any grievance procedure is started,” he said, adding that it is “injustice against the employees and a violation of our right to security of tenure.”
Luayon told Davao Today in a phone interview that their protest on Monday was a “result of accumulated issues concerning the undemocratic policy imposition of the school administration which disregards the school’s community spirit.”
“Kung naa may kausaban nga himoon, manglingkod ta og atong istoryahong duha kay bilateral agreement man ang CBA, so no party can change it unilaterally (If there are any changes that will be implemented, let’s sit and talk because the CBA is a bilateral agreement so no party can change it unilaterally),” he said.
He said they have been raising their concern with the school administrator since last year “but no action was taken”.
Luayon said “there are at least 200 unresolved labor cases involving non-teaching personnel” in HCDC.
He said a former National Conciliation and Mediation Board director told them that HCDC has “the highest number of case with unresolved labor disputes among the list of establishments.”
“The Management’s actions do not give a good picture of our school being a Christian Catholic and Archdiocesan institution. Whenever possible, we do not want to get involved in cases, however, in many occasions when CBA provisions have been violated, we were left with no other option except to bring it into grievance,” he said.
Luayon said the Board of Trustees will be meeting with them on Wednesday to discuss about the matter.
“We hope that they will listen to us. We have submitted our petition to them and we will be listening to what they have to say with regard to our petition,” said Luayon.
“We want a win-win solution,” he said.
Both unions are also calling for the resignation of top administrators including the School President Msgr. Julius C. Rodulfa, Vice President for Administratio Cristina L. Nacionales, and Human Resource Manager Arnold Q. Barillo. They also called on Archbishop Romulo Valles, chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees to scrap the new Employees Guideline.(davaotoday.com)
