The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the National Electrification Administration (NEA) jointly conducted the second batch of the capacity-building activity on collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiations for union and management representatives of electric cooperatives held on recently in Quezon City.
The two-day training, participated in by 82 union and management representatives from 10 electric cooperatives in the Central Luzon, Bicol, and Eastern Visayas regions, supports President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr.’s commitment to sustaining industrial peace through strong and harmonious labor-management relations.
In his message delivered by Assistant Secretary Atty. Lennard Constantine C. Serrano, DOLE Secretary Bienvenido E. Laguesma emphasized that the initiative aims to “cultivate a common understanding among workers and management” and ensure that the Labor Code and relevant regulatory frameworks are applied “in a mutually reinforcing way.”
He reaffirmed the Department’s commitment to upholding freedom of association (FOA) and the right to collective bargaining as enshrined in the 1987 Constitution and the Labor Code of the Philippines.
According to the Labor Secretary, these rights are further reinforced with the country’s ratification of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 87, upholding workers’ right to organize, and ILO Convention 98, encouraging voluntary employer-worker negotiations on certain terms and conditions of employment.
As a positive outcome of the initial training, Secretary Laguesma said that the Department noted a continued decline in the number of acrimonious negotiations in the industry, noting that several CBAs have been peacefully concluded since the program’s launch.
Leading the discussion on labor relations was DOLE Undersecretary Atty. Benedicto Ernesto R. Bitonio, Jr., highlighting the policy and legal frameworks on the right to self-organize and collectively bargain, and NEA’s regulatory authority over the electric cooperatives.
To further equip the participants, representatives from the National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB) discussed negotiation techniques, while NEA shared its policies and guidelines affecting CBA negotiations in electric cooperatives.
