The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) expresses its solidarity with the faculty and staff unions of the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) as they file a notice of strike after the university management refused to negotiate in earnest for higher wages and benefits.

The UA&P Union of Faculty Members (UA&PUFM) and the UA&P Union of Allied Employees (UA&PUAE) filed a notice of strike on August 7 before the Labor Department’s mediation board after the university management refused to present a counter-offer in negotiations for a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), resulting in many breakdown in the negotiations.

Unless the company is in dire financial straits, the purpose of CBA negotiations is to bring working conditions closer to the fulfillment of workers’ labor rights. The UA&P management and the public should listen to UA&P faculty and staff’s claim that their salaries have been below industry standards for more than a decade now.

The faculty and staff’s demand for higher wages and benefits is made more just by the UA&P management’s new policy requiring employees to report to work onsite for 5.5 days a week starting this August, an increase from a mere three (3) days. Also, the cost of living crisis is hitting workers and all Filipinos hard. It is really time for a wage and benefit hike in UA&P.

UA&P faculty and staff are also justified in claiming that the current greatness of the university is also a product of their everyday, ordinary labor. A university that was granted by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) with an autonomous status and by the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities Commission on Accreditation (PACUCOA) with multiple accreditations has a lot to recognize and reward in its workforce.

We call on the UA&P management to negotiate in earnest with the faculty and staff unions especially in relation to their seven priority economic provisions. We call on the management to increase employees’ salaries and benefits and improve promotion policies. It should also improve employees’ HMO coverage and rice allowance.

We reiterate: faculty and staff working conditions are student learning conditions. The necessity of investing in the workforce is most visible in universities. The quality of education cannot improve without a corresponding improvement in the working conditions of university staff and faculty.

Universities should function much more than businesses, but as educational institutions that teach the best principles of our society and the world. Among these principles are labor and human rights, which should be applied to all and the fulfillment of which companies, universities included, should progressively strive for.