Precipitate closures of foreign companies
Whenever our country and our government welcome some companies that intend to operate here, we do so with utmost hospitality. We give them special treatment by allowing them to operate inside our PEZA zones to enjoy special privileges, including tax holidays, and many other forms of liberality. The least that these firms could do to reciprocate would be to give us a little courtesy, a prior notice if they decide to leave for good.
But, alas, this generally-accepted protocol had been broken. While the nation's attention was focused on both the ABS-CBN hullabaloo and the COVID-19 scare, all of a sudden, and out of the blue, the Honda car assembly plant in Laguna dropped a bombshell, consisting of a hurried announcement, transmitted via satellite all the way from Japan, that it is closing its operations in the Philippines. Right then and there, management unceremoniously told its hundreds of regular employees, and thousands of outsourced service providers that immediately on the following day, they are not allowed to work anymore. They did not provide a prior notice to the workers, not to the union and reportedly neither to DOLE.
In the days immediately prior to Honda's blitzkrieg decision (leaving 387 regular workers jobless), Wells Fargo with 700 BPO workers, as well as a unit of Nokia with 700 professionals, were reported to have likewise decided to leave the Philippines and transfer to other locations in Asia and the Pacific. These decisions are necessarily dislocating 1,787 workers and bringing untold sufferings and pains to their families. A number of students now enrolled in various universities and colleges may be compelled to drop their studies. Many loan amortizations may lead to foreclosures of mortgages and jobless families may end up becoming homeless families.
Such precipitate actions also betray these foreign companies’ lack of due respect to the host country and their host government. For a number of years, they have operated highly-profitable operations and raked in billions of US dollars here in our beautiful country. These foreign firms asked our government for permission to be here and they were welcomed and even given tax havens for a while and special treatment inside export processing zones. They have benefited from the hard work, creativity, talent, and skills of the Filipino human capital. For quite a time now, the labor sector has been quite cooperative and the days of union activism are a thing of the past.
The DOLE has not given them much headache, and even the BIR and customs bureau acted with restraint and moderation to make them feel that this country is a haven for private enterprise and business. They have provided jobs and livelihood to many of our countrymen, yes, thanks to them. But as world-class conglomerates and respectable global companies, they should have accorded our government authorities a little respect. Their actions, if we are allowed an attempt at a little analogy, maybe likened to a condo tenant who just packed up, leaving the condo unit, and just call that they are going away for good. If I can be forgiven for saying this: Such an action can hardly be considered good manners.
The next time we welcome aliens to our homeland, let us make sure that these foreign companies should accord us with a little respect. Our need for employment opportunities should not take precedence over our sense of self-respect and our national dignity.
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