Retrenchment in the Philippines Social Sciences Term Paper (Term Paper Sample)

RETRENCHMENT IN THE MIDST OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN THE PHILIPPINES
The year 2020 has been a devastating year in the Philippines. The coronavirus disease, COVID-19 adds more to the country’s burden. The year started with the highlight of Mount Taal erupting, followed by the news about the COVID-19 outbreak, having the first case in the Philippines, and the continuous list of positive cases being confirmed. With the current situation the Philippines had over the past several months, the economy, manpower, and workforce are affected as well. Due to the vaccine not being ready at present, a lot of Filipinos endanger themselves by working outside their homes for them to sustain their families. In contrast, since workforce is limited, production is also limited which led companies to lay-off employees, and worse, retrenchment. Now, retrenchment is another issue that emerged due to the pandemic and causes more problem to a lot of Filipino people. What can employees do if they get retrenched or laid off?
In a news of CNN Philippines (2020), one of the airlines company had to lay-off 12% of their employees due to the pandemic. "Despite all our efforts to curb the effects of the pandemic, AirAsia has made the difficult decision of reducing the company's workforce, but has done everything to keep the number of affected employees to a minimum, totaling 12% of all Filipino Allstars," in a statement said by the company. It is not only AirAsia that laid off their employees but as well as PAL, and Cebu Pacific. This retrenchment in the aviation industry is not the only one who had to retrench employees. Retrenchment was also seen in smaller and micro businesses around the Philippines.
Nicolas and De Vega Law Offices (2020) stated on their post that due to the community quarantine that happened in Metro Manila, it restricted a lot of movement or workforce. The limited movement affected businesses and the labor force which lead to the closure of some businesses and loss of jobs. Soriano (2020) elaborated that under Article 283 of the Labor code, a company may terminate an employee for labor-saving devices, redundancy, retrenchment, or closure or cessation of operations of the establishment or undertaking.