Termination of 11 CIS legal, says Brokenshire

THE Brokenshire College on Thursday insisted that the termination of the 11 clinical instructors (CI) was legal and has basis.

Twenty eight days since the Brokenshire College Faculty and Staff Union-Association of Democratic Labor Organizations-Kilsang Mayo Uno (BCFASU-Adlo-KMU) staged a strike against the school management, the Brokenshire College administration headed by president Leopoldo R. Naive finally broke their silence on the issue.

“The issue here is not money. The issue is, tawag sa Labor Code, superfluity of positions. Ibig sabihin walay estudyante, daghan ang maestro. And the Labor Code protects the business na dili siya pwede mag operate na mas daghan ang iyang tao kesa estudyante. Kahit mag 500 pa ang enrollment sa first year, base sa curriculum sa nursing, dili gihapon pwede mag dako ang number sa CI kay 1st semester sa first year walay clinical duty,” Dr. Linell Malimbag, vice president for academic affairs, said in a press conference.

The BCFASU-Adlo-KMU

staged strike on May 3 after the alleged illegal termination of 11 CIs, who are also members of the union, on the basis of redundancy.

The school has a total of 22 CIs, 11 of them were terminated on the basis of the “last-in, first-out” system, Malimbag said.

Malimbag said the termination was based on the projection of the number of Nursing students in the coming school year, which is only 18. She claimed the number of Nursing students would not suffice to the ratio of faculty and student needed in the nursing program.

However, Rodne Baslot, union president, said the basis of the management is allegedly “baseless and illegal.”

“The number of nursing students could not be determined as early as now because the enrollment for the coming school year has yet to start. More so, under the law, redundancy “exists where the services of an employee are in excess of what is reasonably demanded by the actual requirements of the enterprise...” It is in this light that the redundancy program as implemented by the administration comes illegal because the actual requirement of the school as demanded by law is absent,” the union said in a statement. Malimbag said the projection was not based on the school’s own computation formula, but the formula of Ched Memorandum Order No. 14, Series of 2009 (Policies and Standards for Bachelor of Nursing Program).

“Dili lang na gi project karon. Based on the data of Brokenshire College, in the past five years, there is a continuous downward trend as far as high as 50-70 percent na pag baba sa iyang enrollment. Ang mag graduate 145-148 lang. Even national issue malaman natin na enrollment in nursing is down,” Malimbag said.

Based on the summary of enrollment enrolled for school year 2013-2014, as of May 28, the total number of students who enrolled in the BSN is four--three incoming first students, and one incoming sophomore. Naive said the number is even far from the projection number of the administration. Before the school year 2012-2013 ended in March, he said their projection for the incoming fourth year students was 150, 81 for third year and 31 for second year. “Pero karon, gamay lang gyud, upat ra nienrol,” he said. Other issue that the union wants the management to address is the forged Collective Bargaining Agreement which was done on February 11.

However, the management served individual termination notices to the 11 CIs on March 22.

“The Union felt betrayed of this treacherous act because never did the Administration discuss their intention during the entire negotiation,” Baslot said. He said aside from the legal defect of the cause for termination, the administration did not also heed to the alternatives that were presented by the Union.“The Union proposed that some of the affected C.I’s could be temporarily assigned to teach subjects related to their field, instead of giving the subject to part-time instructors,” Baslot said. “Also, toying to Administration’s projected number of students, the same, the current total 22 C.I.s are just exact if the Faculty to Student Ratio will be based on the existing practice of the school.” ANC