SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Taking the cudgels for workers, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) said it has suspended the operation of a company here for various labor violations and warned that it will suspend other entities if they fail to comply with labor laws and other government regulations on workers’ wages and benefits.
Chairman and Administrator Wilma T. Eisma issued the warning on Friday after the SBMA suspended the Certificate of Registration and Tax Exemption (CRTE) of 1 Aim High Security Agency Inc., a registered business locator here, which was found to have committed several labor violations.
Eisma said the Subic agency “would not hesitate to cancel the registration” of business establishments here if they exploited their workers or failed to abide with set employment practices.
“The SBMA understands the difficulties that companies go through because of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, but these difficulties cannot be an excuse for unfair labor practices,” Eisma said.
“We have given all Subic companies all the help we can give during the pandemic, including relief measures so they can weather the economic slowdown. But we expect them to pay this forward, at least to their workers,” she added.
On Thursday, the SBMA, through its Labor Department, issued a cease-and-desist order to 1 Aim High for the company’s failure to address violations that the SBMA had indicated in its Notice of Inspection Results in July 14 last year.
SBMA Labor Department manager Melvin Varias said the firm failed to pay its workers the following: overtime premium during regular days and holidays to workers who worked for 12 hours; special holiday pay; night differential pay; rest day premium; and underpayment of regular holiday pay to employees who worked on April 9 last year, which was a regular Philippine holiday.
Varias said that after serving the Notice of Inspection Results last year, the SBMA gave 1 Aim High five days to comply, but it was only on February 24 this year that the agency’s owner-president Romeo Maningding Jr. appeared before the SBMA to manifest intent to comply and to pay all fines incurred during the period of non-compliance.
Still, the firm failed to honor its commitments, Varias said, thus prompting the SBMA Labor Department to recommend the suspension or revocation of the company’s CRTE.
Last June 22, the SBMA Board of Directors, upon management recommendation, approved the suspension of 1 Aim High’s CRTE until such time that the firm proved its full compliance with SBMA findings contained in the July 14, 2020 Notice of Inspection Results.
Varias said this was the first time that the SBMA suspended the CRTE of a company registered in the Subic Bay Freeport because of labor violations.
He said the SBMA wants this suspension “to be a lesson for others, so that they won’t dare to commit the same mistakes and not abuse their employees.”
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