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.

Last January 29, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) released its advisory on flexible work arrangements, allowing companies to resort to several types of work schedules to cope with the effects of the U.S. recession.

DOLE emphasized that the flexible work arrangements were better than total closure or termination of a big number of employees.

Among the work arrangements approved are:

Compressed workweek

A workday is increased to more than 8 hours,  so the usual number of 6 work days per week can be reduced, but the regular total of 48 work hours per week is achieved. The increase in work hours per day is not treated as overtime and the addition should not be more than 4 hours. This work day reduction should not last for over 6 months.

(Our firm used this to reduce the building’s electric and other maintenance costs and at the same time help cut employees’ transpo and related expenses.)

Worker Rotation

Employees are given work alternately within the workweek.

Forced Leave

Employees are required to go on leave for several days or weeks using their leave credits if there are any.

(The “if there are any” phrase seemed to mean that firms are allowed to implement extended forced leaves even if the employees have no more leave credits to use.)

Last December, when many of us were put on forced leave, the firm clearly was trying to avoid paying our unusually high holiday payments, although the bosses did not admit it. Through the years, we always did our best to boost our individual production 7 days before the Christmas holidays to receive big holiday payments. Last December, the firm was always talking about costs, more costs and cost cutting.

Broken-time schedule

Work schedule is not continuous, but the regular total number of work hours within the week or day remains.

Flexi-holidays

Employees avail of holidays at some other days, but there should be no diminution of holiday benefits.

Other flexible work arrangements

DOLE allows companies and its employees to explore other alternative arrangements.

Grievances

Differences in the interpretation of  flexible work arrangements are resolved by the company’s grievance mechanism.

If the grievance mechanism is unable to fix the differences, the grievance is referred to the DOLE Regional Office which has jurisdiction over the workplace.

Notice Requirement

Companies are required to notify their area’s DOLE Regional Office of their implementation of any flexible work arrangement.

DOLE Advisory No. 2 Series of 2009

Signed by DOLE Secretary Marianito D. Roque                                              January 29, 2009

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: