The Department of Labor and Employment Davao Region recently launched the Single Entry Approach Desks (SEADs) as the Department’s reform program in the labor arbitration and adjudication system. This program is being implemented in the DOLE offices/branches nationwide, which serve as entry point in speeding up the resolution of all cases affecting workers and employers.Representatives from the labor and management groups manifested their full support to the new approach in labor dispute settlement, the Single Entry Approach (SENA), by signing the joint statement “acknowledging the need for the key players and stakeholders to fully institutionalize the voluntary modes of labor dispute settlement which will unclog the dockets of the National Labor Relations System and the other case-resolution machineries of the DOLE, and will ensure fast, fair and inexpensive resolution of labor disputes”.
The signing of the statement of support by the key players and stakeholders also include their support to other DOLE initiatives namely, the Early Warning System Project, the Productivity Toolbox for MSMEs, the Voluntary Code of Good Practices for the Banana and the ICT BPO industries and the Labor Management Governance Academy. This was made in the presence of the Honorable Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz.
The SEADs will also be established in the regional branches of the National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB) and of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC). This is in pursuit of the goal of President Benigno S. Aquino III in his 22-point labor and employment agenda to reform labor arbitration and adjudication systems.
The SEA desk is being established in compliance with DOLE Department Order No. 107-10, series of 2010 which mandates a 30-day conciliation-mediation for all cases involving workers and employers.
This 30-day mandatory conciliation-mediation approach, which shall be made operational through the SEADs, is a reform program that answers President Benigno S. Aquino III’s directive to the DOLE to “reform labor arbitration and adjudication systems by streamlining procedures, removing red tape, and at the same time, restore integrity and fairness in the system and to ensure that 98% of all pending labor cases are disposed of with quality decisions by April 2011.”
“There will be desks to be manned by forty-two (42) officers in Mindanao who have been trained on conciliation-mediation work last November 24-26 in Davao City. Region 11 has been designated as one of the ‘priority regions’ based on case volume assessment”, said Regional Director Jalilo Dela Torre.
The SEAD launching was one of the activities during the “Social Partnership at Work” as part of DOLE 11’s month-long 77th anniversary celebration of the Department this December on the theme, “Tuwid na Daan sa Tapat na Paglilingkod”
