Urgent appeal calling to support the just demands for job security, wage increase and benefits of the Far Eastern University employees

Defend Job Philippines strongly support the employees of Far Eastern University under their  union Far Eastern University Faculty Association (FEUFA) as they confront deadlock on their  Collective Bargaining Agreement with the management of Far Eastern University.

Far eastern university Faculty Association has been sincerely negotiating for the economic  provisions in the collective bargaining agreement such security of tenure, wage increase and  benefits with the managament of FeU since October 2009. However, it went into a deadlock last  January 2010 because of the FeU management’s non consideration to their demands.

No doubt, Far Eastern University has the capacity to give the demands of its employees:

a.    According to the statement of income of FVU Inc., it has earned a total net income worth  P 160 million from April to December 2009. Income has increased due to annual tuition hikes  implementation.

b.     It is also manifested in the balance sheet of FEU that its total assets has increased  from P3.4 billion to P4.2 billion from March to December 2009. As a matter of fact, FeU build  a new school in Silang Cavite and the construction of  FeU Makati is fast approaching.

Before CBA negotiation took place on October 2009, FeU has been eradicating faculty benefits  such as the Extra Teaching Service (ETS) of 6-9 units, Teaching Excellence Award which amounts  equal to twelve thousand pesos (php12,000) per academic year  and Perfect Attendance Award  amounting to two thousand five hundred pesos per semester. That is why, the faculty  association is pushing very hard to achieve better in their security tenure, wages and  benefits.

FeU employees and other education workers are professional employees skilled to give quality  education to the youth who will build our nation’s future. But how can this be done if they  are denied of their economic benefits and their security of tenure is under attack?

Defend Job Philippines believes that the deadlock in the CBA and removal of faculty benefits  is a systematic move of the FEU management to ensure their profit by implementing cost cutting  measures to the economic benefits of the employees and outsourcing mechanisms.

In times of crisis, it shall be the profit and big salaries of the top FeU management that  should be slashed and not the Salaries, Wages and Benefits of the employees.

FEU stockholders are truly capitalist-educators.  It looks like top FeU stockholders such as  Seyrel Investment and Realty Corporation whose owner is Aurelio Montinola III, President of  the Bank of the Philippine Island system is having 28.6% share and followed by Sysmart  Corporation owned by Henry Sy with 21.1% are running an educational institution just like  their giant corporations that are implementing outsourcing, contractualization and  flexibilization in the name of making profit.