Gov’t workers’ unions call DBM plan ‘ill-timed, unfair’

State workers’ unions on Thursday criticized the Marcos administration’s planned “rightsizing” of the bureaucracy for being ill-timed and unfair to the hundreds of thousands of long-serving contractual workers in government.

The Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLink), which represents more than 114,000 rank-and-file employees in government, said the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) was merely after saving funds in the short term.

“A well-planned rightsizing plan developed with the full participation of public sector unions can help address organizational gaps and improve structure and processes in the government,” PSLink said.

“However, based on DBM’s pronouncements, it seems what they are pushing for is not genuine rightsizing, but downsizing. In fact they have already made estimates on how much they can save if 5 percent of government workers will lose their jobs,” it pointed out.

PSLink said that while the country was still trying to recover from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, “prioritizing downsizing in the guise of rightsizing is reckless, unjust and inhumane.”

Contractuals

“We believe that during times of crisis, the government should take the lead in generating jobs, not destroying them,” it stressed.

The Confederation for Unity Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (Courage) urged the new administration to instead address the “alarming” number of contractual workers on so-called job orders and contracts of service who have been with the government for years without job security and social protection.

In a television interview on Wednesday, Courage president Santi Dasmariñas said that instead of downsizing government agencies, the effect of which is mass layoff, the Marcos administration should instead regularize public servants who have been working on a contractual basis for a long time.

“Every new administration lays off government workers only to hire more employees and appoint more officials, which is part of the spoils and patronage system that defeats any effort to really practice good governance,” Courage said in a statement.

It said a study by the University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration has shown that the country’s ratio of government workers to the population was among the lowest globally, “thus disproving the claim that we have a bloated bureaucracy.”

“There are thousands of vacant positions needing to be filled, hundreds of thousands of contractual government workers who need to be regularized and lowly public servants from the national to the local levels who need to be given just salary rates,” Courage pointed out.

Streamlining processes

Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma and Migrant Workers Secretary Susan Ople confirmed that President Marcos has given the order to all heads of departments and agencies to undertake a rightsizing of their staff.

“The directive of President Marcos on rightsizing applies to all departments. We were given a directive to look at our departments and see where rightsizing is really needed,” Laguesma said in a news conference on Thursday.

“I came from the private sector and rightsizing means streamlining of processes, structural reforms, putting people where there is a need to beef up but mindful of the needs of those who will be affected,” he added.

He said that from his experience, many government contractuals could not be placed in vacant regular positions because they lacked certain eligibility requirements. Ople, meanwhile, said her focus was to streamline the processes in the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration to make them easier for applicants and foreign employers.

“A lot of in-house streamlining has to be done, not necessarily of personnel as of now,” she said, speaking via teleconference.

“We are looking at streamlining of processes and rules that are so complicated for an ordinary worker who has no lawyer. The performance review and assessment of personnel will be forthcoming,” Ople added.

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