The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) was able to settle 43 percent of its conciliation cases last year, resulting in more than P41 million in monetary benefits for 514 workers.
DOLE Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma said the department’s National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB), has been able to sustain its high-resolution rate of existing labor cases under its disposition as of January this year.
Aside from settling labor cases, the NCMB’s voluntary arbitration program likewise resulted in more than P246 million in monetary claims for 81 workers from all over the country.
The landmark Single Entry Approach (SEnA) program, on the other hand, achieved a high 81% disposition rate of the existing 664 cases and a robust 62% settlement rate resulting in more than P6 million in monetary claims for 247 workers from all over the country. Vito Barcelo
NCMB Executive Director Ma. Teresita Lacsamana-Cancio reported that the board is on par to continue high disposition rates in its mediation and resolution programs.
She cited the NCMB’s major conciliation and intervention programs, such as the board’s preventive mediation program, voluntary arbitration, grievance system, and the Single Entry Approach (SEnA), that institutionalized a faster and simplified way of handling labor disputes before they become full-blown court battles.
“The NCMB also continues to strengthen its task of nurturing relationships between workers and management. As of last month, the board increased its labor-management cooperation (LMC) network to 5,178 companies, while its program that put workers’ complaint mechanisms in place in every workplace has resulted in a network of thousands of grievance mechanisms in 5,369 companies,” Laguesma said.
He said that this grievance machinery network has resulted in a 99.5 percent containment of strikes or notice of strikes, as of January, among the total number of companies that the board’s effective grievance system had bolstered.
On the other hand, Cancio disclosed that there were no pending strikes and work stoppages at the beginning of the year and that the NCMB achieved a disposition and settlement rate of 26 percent from the board’s handling of existing notices of strike as of last month. The board’s successful dissolution of the pending notices of strike likewise resulted in more than P13 million in monetary benefits for 640 workers.