Labor department chief seeks to strengthen social dialogue
Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz has emphasized her strong determination to expand and strengthen social dialogue and partnership in the country as an anchor to address the challenges of increasing local employment opportunities.
At the turnover rites at the Department of Labor and Employment, Baldoz said this is one of the priority goals of the Aquino administration to reinvigorate the labor and employment front.
Baldoz, the country’s 25th labor and employment chief, said she “humbly accept the responsibilities and accountabilities of the Office of the Secretary of Labor and Employment,” as she received the DOLE flag from former Secretary Marianito Roque.
“The job has just begun,” Baldoz said, even as she strongly emphasized that “President Benigno Simeon Aquino III is correct in saying that the people are our real bosses. It is in this context that , expect support for the public good.”
Baldoz has included in her top agenda the expanded social protection of overseas Filipino workers. Reflecting on the first Cabinet meeting of the Aquino Administration, she said that the protection of OFWs must be strengthened, and that to ensure this, the DOLE’s agencies involved in the effort, particularly the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration. The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration must enhance their services in coordination with the International Labor Affairs Bureau.
Baldoz said the DOLE, in protecting the OFWs, will intensify its efforts to curb illegal recruitment and trafficking in women and children. She emphasized the need to lessen the vulnerabilities of OFWs through higher level skills and upgrading.
“We shall expand our Filipino Workers Resource Centers in host destinations,” she said, adding: “Every distressed overseas worker must be given every possible assistance until they are fully reintegrated with their families at their residence.”
At home, Baldoz said that she will continue to pursue the DOLE’s Project Jobs Fit and disseminate its results down to the community level to inform the people on the proper steps they have to take in searching for jobs, and to solve the skills-jobs mismatch, and to increase their employability based on industry- and investments-based opportunities available in the local market.
“Our labor market information system must be linked with the rest of the electronic job sources available, and disseminated to the community and barangay levels.”
Prior to her appointment by President Aquino, Baldoz had served in various capacities in the area of industrial relations, management and international labor migration.
Baldoz served the longest as POEA administrator. She rose from the DOLE ranks as a mediator-arbiter of the DOLE’s Bureau of Labor Relations; Labor arbiter of the National Labor Relations Commission; deputy executive director and later executive director of the National Conciliation and Mediation Board, and then, before her POEA stint, as labor undersecretary.
She is a recipient of the highest DOLE KAPWA Award for her outstanding accomplishments as Executive Director of the NCMB and as POEA Administrator.