10 former employees of GMA-7 Cebu file raps vs Gozon, others

GMA7’s chair and CEO Felipe Gozon INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

CEBU CITY, Philippines—At least 10 former employees of GMA-7 Cebu on Tuesday morning filed a labor complaint against officials of GMA 7 for alleged illegal retrenchment.

Named respondents in the case lodged before the National Labor Relations Commission in Central Visayas (NLRC) were Felipe Gozon, chief executive of GMA Network Inc., Anne Marie Tan, station manager of GMA 7 Cebu, and Suzzane Salva-Alueta, program manager of GMA 8 Cebu’s news and public affairs.

“We just want to know if the management had grounds to remove us. There are questions of laws which we want to raise, and after contemplating about this for months, we decided to pursue a case against GMA 7,” said veteran broadcast-journalist Jun Veliganio.

Veliganio served as senior reporter of GMA-7’s, “24 Oras” Central Visayas for 16 years.

Among the issues raised by the complainants include the erroneous computations of their separation pay and other benefits as well as the regularization of casual.

Contractual and probationary employees at the time of the retrenchment Veligano said did not receive any sufficient explanation from the management of GMA-7 why they were retrenched last April 24.

“We were told that we have to go since there’s already a redundancy in job functions and responsibilities. But why am I, a senior reporter, included when there are those young employees who were retained?” he said.

“If they based it on our performance, we passed the evaluation. And even if we failed, the first penalty should have been a warning or that we undergo training, not retrenchment,” he added.

The retrenched GMA 7 Cebu workers were assisted by the Visayan Human Development Agency.

At least five lawyers vowed to help the complainants. TVJ
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