Global Economic Crisis Affects Export Companies in the Philippines

The economic crisis is pretty much apparent and experienced by most countries in the whole world. In the City of San Fernando, Pampanga where the Subic Freeport is located, there are eighty-four export companies that struggled and failed to overcome the global economic crisis. Statistics have shown that 15,734 workers from these companies were displaced. Some of these workers even sued their companies for not being able to claim their worker benefits.

The companies that were struggling have started to dismiss almost 4,270 employees while also decreasing the working hours almost 11,464 employees over the last five months. This fact is based on the report of the Department of Labor.

Some companies decided to lay off workers to reduce their manpower costs and save more for other company expenses. The global economic crisis has hit companies with export products that are quite seasonal or not usually in demand all the time. Workers who were not laid off have to work for fewer than usual hours with workload that is greater than previous.

This situation has caused a commotion among workers and decided to fight for their rights to their employee benefits. A lot of workers have filed cases at the Department of Labor and Employment as well as the National Conciliation and Mediation Board. Cases were mostly about companies that fail to provide their workers with the benefits that they deserve.

Usually, the reasons for laying off of workers by the companies are decreasing demands for products, high production costs, and lack of capital. The prices of raw materials are becoming more expensive due to the economic crisis and that goes the same for the exportation costs. With their products not selling out, the companies are left with a choice of decreasing their expenses in order to survive the crisis.

Sacrificing huge number of workers and giving more workload to the remaining workers will surely cause a commotion and problem to the companies; however, through this, companies will be able to cope with the economic crisis and will be able to overcome it in due time. During that time, the temporarily laid off workers would be able to get their jobs back. This is what the companies promise to the workers that were laid off. Once the company regains its stability, the workers that were previously laid off will be hired back. Some workers seem to doubt this promise and started looking for other options because they also need to survive the economic crisis that is striking people from all over the world.

Source: Orejas, Tonette. "15,000 Central Luzon workers displaced." INQUIRER.net 15 May 2009
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