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The Nation Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) ruled in
favor of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Faculty
Association, which filed complaints against the AIM for unfair labor
practices.
In a 25-page decision, Labor
Arbiter Marita Padolina founded the AIM management “guilty” of
unfair labor practices because of “repeated attempts by the
management to quash complainants’ right to self-organization which
is protected by no less than the Constitution itself.”
It can be recalled the faculty
association filed a string of cases against the AIM management
before the Labor commission and the Department of Labor and
Employment for a long list of acts committed against professors of
the institution, who are members and officers of the faculty union.
In an interview, faculty
association chairman, Dr. Victor Limlingan, and Emmanuel Leyco, the
president, said that it is time for AIM’s management to admit to
its mistakes and correct them.
The officials also urged the top
management of AIM to abide by the Labor commission’s rulings and
do what is right with its top professors, which is to consider them
as the institution’s prime assets.
“The favorable NLRC arbiter’s
decision sends a clear message to the AIM governing body to review
the performance of the current AIM management,” Leyco said.
“The mishandling by management
of its conflict with the faculty is derailing the institute,
Asia’s once premier management school, from fulfilling its mandate
to educate the future managers of the country,” the
association’s officials added.
Leyco said that disregarding the
Labor commission’s rulings would only prolong AIM’s agony,
because the courts can scrutinize the institution’s past
management mistakes that could cast a cloud on institution’s
credibility since AIM teaches good corporate management and
governance.
“What lessons are AIM
management giving to the future managers of Asia when the legal
courts are finding their actions as illegal?” Leyco said.
In March, the Labor commission
found the one-year suspension meted by AIM management on April 27,
2007, on Leyco and Limlingan as illegal.
In April, the quasi-judicial body
tasked to adjudicate labor complaints, ruled on a separate case
filed by a senior AIM professor, Jose Jesus Roces, before the Labor
commission against his dismissal in 2007 by the institution’s
management, finding it illegal. Roces was ordered reinstated.
Apparently as a result of the
conflict between management and the faculty association, AIM lost
its international accreditation with Equis, a respected Europe-based
organization that accredits and recognizes education institutions
all over the world.
--James Konstantin Galvez
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