Labor group slams Baldoz over advice to nurses

Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

A militant labor group on Sunday slammed Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz for advising jobless nurses to apply at call centers or other components of the country’s business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

The Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) said Baldoz’s advice showed the government’s “lack of a comprehensive and sustainable employment plan.”

“Baldoz’s call shows that the Aquino government only has an ad hoc employment plan, not a comprehensive and sustainable one. After creating a glut of nursing graduates who failed to find jobs abroad, the government is now calling on them to apply for the limited number of jobs in the BPO industry,” KMU chairman Elmer Labog said in a statement.

Few openings

They want to be nurses, Labog said.

Citing data from the labor department’s Bureau of Local Employment, Baldoz called on the many jobless nurses in the country to apply for health-related information outsourcing positions.

This includes jobs as medical transcriptionists, medical secretaries, medical coders and billers, medical assistants, medical representatives and medical butlers.

Labog said he believed many jobless nurses had tried applying for BPO positions but there were not that many openings.

“Unemployed nurses must have applied for these jobs before and were not hired. It’s not as if there’s an abundance of employment opportunities in the BPO industry and jobless nurses have simply failed to take notice,” he said.

The folly of it

The KMU said Baldoz’s call showed the “folly” of the Aquino administration’s employment plan, which is geared toward serving the demands of the foreign market and not the interests of Filipinos.

“The majority of our people badly need health care and unemployed nurses can be employed to meet this need. The Aquino government, instead of trying to meet the needs of our people, wants jobless nurses to meet the needs of the market dominated by big foreign capitalists,” Labog said.

Such a market-centered approach, he recalled, was behind the government’s promotion of nursing courses throughout the country in the first place. The drop in the demand for nurses abroad exposed the unsustainability of the approach, he said. Jerome Aning