DUMAGUETE CITY—A bargaining deadlock continues between Silliman University and its SU Faculty Union or SUFA after marathon talks in the presence of the National Conciliation and Mediation Board of the Department of Labor and Employment in the Negros Island Region failed to reach a consensus.
SUFA president Jan Antoni Credo said in a press statement the Union will “continue to exercise its rights protected and guaranteed by the Constitution and by the Labor Code.”
The conciliation-mediation meetings started early this year after SUFA filed in January a Notice of Strike.
The decision to go on strike was reached after the SU administration “failed to present improved counter-offers to the reduced demands of SUFA.”
The Union, however, withdrew in March the Notice of Strike “so as not to disrupt the graduation exercises.”
Credo said the lifting of the strike notice was also the Union’s way of giving the administration another chance to go back to the drawing board for two weeks, and reconsider its position in relation to the teachers’ reduced demands.
The Union’s reduced demands include: improvement in the retirement pay of 1.5 or 45 days; bonuses of P5,000 for Founders Day, P3,000 for Christmas; class size of 20 pupils per section in Kinder 1 and 2 and 35 pupils in 1st and 2nd grades; K+12 faculty scholarship subsidies of P20,000 without conditions; across-the-board increases of P1,500 for 2017 and P2,500 in 2018; a one-time bonus of P40,000; and an acceptance of the Administration’s offer of a Productivity Enhancement Incentive but without conditions.
“To say the very least, the Administration ignored the kindness of the Union, and failed to esteem the withdrawal of the faculty’s Notice of Strike,” Credo said.
He said the audited financial reports of the University for the last five years have “consistently indicated surpluses or excess of revenues over expenses.”
Credo said the Union believes that on that basis, the operation of the University will continue to be viable.