SSS bonuses open ‘old wounds’ for labor union

SAN PEDRO, Laguna – The controversy over million-peso bonuses that executives of the Social Security System (SSS) gave themselves has opened what labor leaders at a multinational food firm said were old wounds inflicted in the past by the biggest recipient of the controversial SSS bonuses, SSS chair Juan Santos.

Leaders of the Union of Filipro Employees (UFE) said Santos, as president of Filipro (now Nestle Philippines), opposed workers’ demands for improved retirement benefits in a collective bargaining agreement.

The UFE is the workers’ union at Nestle. From 1990 to 2005, Santos served as chief executive officer and head of the food and drinks giant, then known as Filipro, with a manufacturing plant in Cabuyao, Laguna province.

Santos was trade secretary under the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who joined the so-called “Hyatt 10,” or members of the Arroyo Cabinet who withdrew support from Arroyo at the height of the so-called “Hello Garci” scandal that linked Arroyo to operations to rig the results of the 2004 presidential elections.

The UFE also criticized two labor representatives in the SSS board—Daniel Edralin of the Alliance of Progressive Labor and Marianito Mendoza of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines—for keeping mum about the bonuses while publicly declaring they would return theirs.

“It just so happened that this was exposed. We wonder how it would have been if this had not come out in the public,” said UFE head Noel Alemania on Thursday.

Alemania said Santos was Filipro president in 2005 when Diosdado Fortuna, then UFE leader, was killed.

Police had tagged Fortuna as a drug dealer but the Commission on Human Rights in 2010 found the charge to be false.

“We don’t mind the automatic [SSS] deductions [from monthly wages] because there’s a retirement package to look forward to,” said Alemania.

“But it pains us to hear about these people getting lavish bonuses out of workers’ contributions,” he said.