Ex-PNB employees stage protest to take back benefits

Retirees of the Philippine National Bank (PNB) in Negros Occidental hold a protest rally in front of the bank on Araneta Street in Bacolod City on Tuesday, Nov. 7, to demand payment of their rightful benefits as ruled by the Supreme Court. (CARLA GOMEZ / INQUIRER VISAYAS)

Several retired employees of the Philippine National Bank (PNB) staged protests in the cities of Baguio and Bacolod on Tuesday to join their colleagues in a nationwide protest to demand a return of benefits they lost when the country’s oldest bank was privatized.

PNB started out as the leading state bank after it was formed in 1916. It became the first universal bank in the Philippines in 1980 and was acquired by tycoon Lucio Tan after it was privatized by the government in 1989. After its merger with the Tan-owned Allied Bank on Feb. 9, 2013, PNB became the fifth largest private domestic bank in the country.

In Baguio, 10 of the 15 retired PNB Baguio workers protested in front of the PNB branch along downtown Session Road before it opened at 9 a.m.

They carried placards to advocate better entitlements for workers who retire or resign from the bank.

Delays

A former bank officer who joined the group said they timed the national protest action with the resumption of sessions in Congress. They are seeking legislation that would give retired PNB employees lifetime pensions like government workers.

They said they were fighting not just for better retirement pay for the bank’s workforce but also “for respect, for having served the institution for decades,” said the former official who declined to be identified in this report.In Bacolod, about 70 of 300 PNB retirees in Negros Occidental gathered in front of the PNB branch on Araneta Street in the city to air their grievances amid the rain.

The protesters, wearing black shirts, are among about 8,500 PNB retirees nationwide who have not been paid because of years of “delaying tactics” by the bank’s management, retiree Ed Pama said.

Retirees of the Philippine National Bank (PNB) in Negros Occidental hold a protest rally in front of the bank on Araneta Street in Bacolod City on Tuesday, Nov. 7, to demand payment of their rightful benefits as ruled by the Supreme Court. (CARLA GOMEZ / INQUIRER VISAYAS)

“PNB is really capable of paying us. It’s one of the biggest commercial banks now. If they are saying their employees are their assets why don’t they pay what is due us,” Pama said.

They protested PNB’s delays in releasing back pay representing the cost of living allowances (Cola) and other benefits of employees who served from 1989 to 1996 as directed by a regional trial court (RTC) in 2010, by the Court of Appeals (CA) in 2016, and by the Supreme Court’s Third Division in a resolution issued on May 29 this year.

These courts addressed a 2006 class action suit filed by 60 PNB employees and 15 retired workers to secure their back pay.

Chastised

The RTC decision directed PNB “to pay petitioners and its former and incumbent employees and officers the back pay of their cost of living allowance and special amelioration allowance of 40 percent and 10 percent, respectively, of their basic salary, covering the period of July 1, 1989, to May 26, 1996, or up to their separation from service, whichever comes first.”

PNB asked the high court to either nullify the RTC ruling, which was affirmed by the CA, or to remand the case to the RTC.But the Third Division backed the RTC and chastised PNB, saying, “The records glaringly reveal that PNB’s failure to adduce any evidence to support its case is due to its own failure to appear in the conferences that the RTC scheduled, which … were initiated by PNB itself.”

It added: “PNB was given several opportunities to show how respondents were not entitled to their monetary claims, or how it has no duty to pay the same. However, instead of using these opportunities to present evidence, PNB insisted on employing delays, filing unnecessary pleadings and asking for several postponements.”

Retiree Eden Sombito was hoping their simultaneous nationwide protest would reach the top management of PNB. INQ