Flexible Work Arrangements from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE)
Last December, when we were put on an extended forced leave, I wondered whether it was legal.
But that is water under the bridge now.
Some worse developments happened, and I’m now out of the company. Since the company is U.S.-owned, it was greatly affected by the U.S. recession.
It was good I had another job waiting, so I was able to continue paying our seemingly unending bills. The Lord made a way for me.
We were given separation payments, but they were not as substantial as those given by multinationals.
Some of the Best Freeware, Free Advice You Can Use for Your Website
1. Wordweb
You need a combined thesaurus and dictionary to help you with your writing some of the time. And of course, you want an easy-to-use, complete, current and accessible one. WordWeb is it. You will be glad you discovered it. The free version is as good as any dictionary on the Internet. You can download it and then put a shortcut on your desktop. For freelance writers like me, this is an amazing gift.
2. Blogger
Not only you can use Blogger.com to host your sites, you can also use it to easily compose your posts or articles for other sites. For example, you’re writing for Squidoo which doesn’t have an automatic html feature, or you’re composing something for your Wordpress sidebar, and you need to put links or you need to put some words in colors or in better fonts, you just go to the Create New Post of your blogger.com account, click Compose and then create your posts or short notes. After you finish, click Edit Html, and then you have it, your short notes in Html format. Of course, Wordpress has a more sophisticated writing interface, but I’ve found that blogger.com loads and responds very fast for short posts and notes for my Wordpress sidebars.
3. Fotoflexer
This is one of the easiest free online editing photo editors I’ve found. You don’t even have to register before using it. Just upload your photo from your PC, or get it from other online photo hosts such as picasaweb, and then you can start editing your photo. Fotoflexer is good for non-Photoshop experts like me because it has an Undo feature that you can click many times. It also has Apply and Cancel buttons. When you try the tools such as Effects and Beautify, you can try clicking all options and then click Cancel if you don’t like the result.
4. Webmasterlabor
If you’re a freelance writer, you would like to make sure that your article is not exactly the same as any other article on the Internet. Surely, you wouldn’t like anyone to think of even just a taint of plagiarism when they read your article. Even if you know you wrote it on your own, it pays to check it. Just paste your article on the box, click Compare with Google, copy the number shown, click Compare and then wait for a few minutes until a new page appears. Click New and then you’d see if some of your phrases have duplicates on the internet. Of course, if you have the paid Copyscape service, you don’t need this. There are other tests, which I would describe in another article.
As of May 2009, this site has stopped its plagiarism checking service. As a substitute, I recommend PlagiarismDetect.com This needs registration and accomplishment of a short usage survey.
5. Create your Own Widget-Ready Footer in Wordpress
help-developer.com/index.php/2008/07/creating-a-widget-ready-footer-in-wordpress
This article is specially mentioned, although there are lots of helps across the internet, because it was really helpful to me. It was just Copy and Paste, and some little tweaks in the CSS after. If you’re using a Wordpress theme that has no footer “sidebar”, and you like to have one, here’s a set of instructions very easy to follow. Just copy and paste. There is just one instruction there that you need to change– the codes that you need to paste on your footer.php. Just download the files the author is asking you to download. Open the footer.php in Word and then copy the subfooter block. This is the one you need to copy and paste on your footer.php. Perhaps the author just wants us to think a little and not just copy and paste and then sleep.
Opening a Paypal Account Is Free and Easy
Paypal is an online payment system. It’s free for personal users and offered for a fee to businesses.
Three Kinds of Accounts
- Personal Account — for individuals who pay online
- Premier Account — for individuals who buy and sell online
- Business Account — for companies and organizations
Opening an account is free and easy.
Sending Money
Sending money through Paypal is free. You use your Mastercard, Visa and American Express cards or your US bank account.
Withdrawing Money
There is a fee of 50 pesos for withdrawing less than 7,000 pesos. If it’s 7,000 pesos or more, it’s free.
Your withdrawal is done using your account with your Philippine bank and it takes about 2 to 5 working days. So, before you make your withdrawal, you must first add your bank account details to your Paypal account. Just click Withdraw and then Withdraw funds to your bank account. You will be requested to enter your name, bank name, bank account number, and a 9-digit bank code. You can copy your bank code from the Philippine PayPal bank code list compiled by James of pinoymoneytalk.com.
Additional tips
- Make sure the name in your Paypal account is exactly the same as the name on your bank account. There is a return fee of 250 pesos, if the transaction fails due to this error.
- To make sure you are really on PayPal site, check 3 things:
- your URL has s on the https://www.paypal.com
- your URL has the PayPal icon, a blue-colored P, and the name Paypal, Inc. (US)
- at the right bottom corner, there should be www.paypal.com and an image of a lock
Company Background
PayPal, based on San Jose, California, was founded in 1998 and was bought by eBay in 2002. Currently, it has more than 153 million accounts in 190 countries and in 18 currencies around the world.
PayPal has also received numerous Internet industry awards, including the 2006 Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Financial Services Site and the 2006 Webby Award for Best Financial Services Site.
Forced Leave in the Philippines, According to DOLE
Last December, I was put on forced leave for ten days by my employer, together with 15 other colleagues. It was good I had another source of income, otherwise some of my payables would have not been paid.
Actually, the boss didn’t use the term “forced leave.” And she refuses to call it so. She just explained that the Philippines branch needed to cut costs for the month of December so that the U.S. parent would not close the operations in Makati. Whew! She further said that the U.S. is contemplating consolidating the Philippine operations into a location where costs are lower.
I visited the site of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), but surprisingly I couldn’t find anything on forced leaves. It’s good the site accepts queries. So I sent the following query last December:
Sir/Madam: Does the Labor Code have provisions on forced leaves? I have searched all over the site and inside the Labor Code books/chapters and I can’t find something about forced leaves. Kindly please help me find them. And please email me the links. The only things that I’ve found on the Internet about forced leaves in the Phil. are discussions about it in tsikot.yehey.com forum. And of course, they’re not official views. I like to know if forced leaves are legal, as I was put on forced leave starting today together with about 13 others. We’re regular employees. My manager though doesn’t like to label it as forced leave because we’re not paid by the hour, but by the number of records we write. The managers argued that they need to cut costs for the month of December, which has a lot of holidays. Thanks a lot.
And hooray, the Legal Service of DOLE answered relatively fast!
Dear Ms. Nora:
Work days may be reduced on account of losses. The reduction in the number of regular working days is resorted to by the employer to prevent serious losses due to causes beyond his control, such as when there is a substantial slump in the demand for his goods or services or when there is lack of raw materials. This is more humane and in keeping with sound business operations than the outright termination of the services or the total closure of the enterprise.
In situations where there is valid reduction of workdays, the employer may deduct the wages and living allowances corresponding the days taken off from the workweek, in the absence of agreement specifically providing that a reduction in the number of workdays will not adversely affect the remuneration of employees. This view is consistent on the principle of “no-work-no-pay”. Furthermore, since the reduction of workdays is resorted to as a cost-saving measure, it would be unfair for the employer to pay the wages and living allowances even on unworked days that were taken off from the regular workweek.
Thank you for writing.
Legal Service, DOLE
*Please be advised that this email address will only be used to answer email queries sent through our comments and inquiries section. Kindly send your questions through our comments and inquiries section in www.dole.gov.ph
Forced Leave: My First in 16 Years
Today is the first day of my forced leave. I’ve been working so long for this firm I never thought I’d see the day I wouldn’t go to work because I was ordered not to. Today, I did.
Yesterday, when our project manager told us the news, I immediately felt angry. I felt betrayed. I felt ingratitude on the part of the employer. Although the managers admitted it only after some arguments between management and our group, the forced leaves were aimed to cut costs for the month of December.
As all of us Pinoys know, December is full of regular holidays. For hourly-paid employees, the computation is simple. They get 100 percent of their daily rate even if they don’t work on these holidays, as long as they were at work the day before the holidays.
In our firm, which is a U.S. based Indian-managed data conversion service provider, we’re not paid by the hour. We’re paid by the number of short articles that we write. We’re regulars and we get benefits most other employees in Metro Manila get.
Our holiday payments are computed by dividing by seven our total payments for the seven days before the holiday. This year, there are six holidays during the Christmas/New Year week: Dec 25, Dec 26, Dec 29, Dec 30, Dec 31, Jan 1.
Imagine if we produce work worth 1,000 pesos per day as what happens if we do our best? We would get a total of 6,000 pesos from the holidays!
But that won’t happen now. We’re on forced leave.
The second part of this article is here:
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