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16 July, 2007
Justice was slow, but it finally came on 29 June when the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB), multinational drug company Bayer AG, and the National Contact Point for Germany came to agreement on a longstanding case from the Philippines.
With assistance from ICEM affiliate IGBCE and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the agreement grants a trade union leader who was summarily fired in the year 2000 a hefty backpay package, with additional compensation. It also resolves a union dues issue for a chemical workers’ union that represents workers at Bayer’s 600-worker factory in the Canlubang Industrial Estate, Calamba, Philippines.
Juanito Facundo, now 58 and once president of the plant-level union, and the union’s treasurer were called into an office in 2000 and fired without notice. Facundo was an electrical engineer and a loyal employee for 30 years. Bayer Philippines said it was merely a matter of redundancy and restructuring, but the victims claimed it was for testifying against managers in an unfair labor practice case and for leading a lawful 1997 strike.
The cases went before the National Labor Relations Commission but after several legal proceedings, the government dropped the complaints. In 2003, DGB picked up the matter and made it a labour rights case under the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
After tireless work by DGB, Chairman Thomas de Win of the Bayer Works Council in Germany, TUAC, IGBCE, and the Manila office of the Friedrich Ebert Siftung (FES) Foundation, the German company, after visiting the Philippines to conduct its own investigation, came to written terms in late ending the long ordeal.