Korean employers angered 13 Filipino teachers, who were not paid their wages and were illegally fired by a Korean school, when they ditched several labor settlement meetings at the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC).
The Korean owners of the Blissful English School, formerly the CG English academy, failed to show up for two settlement meetings scheduled for Thursday and March 5. The owners, a family named Cho, had been accused of illegally dismissing the teachers and not paying their separation pay.
Jaymar Reyes, who was a teacher at the language school for five years, said that one of the school owners, Il Un Cho, informed them about the company's shaky financial status in December last year. In January this year, the management then asked for their resignation.
Reyes said they accepted the request to resign and had asked the management to give them separation pay. The Korean owners, however, said they would only be paid P1,000 for their length of service.
According to the Labor Code of the Philippines, a worker who is terminated is entitled to a separation pay equivalent to at least one month's pay or at leadt one month's pay for every year of service, whichever is higher. Reyes, for example, was paid P16,000 per month, but only received P5,000 in separation pay.
Laarni Menguito, another teacher, also discovered that their benefits, like the Social Security System (SSS), Philippine Health Association (PhilHealth), and Pag-ibig Fund, were not remitted when one of their co-workers were hospitalized.
The teachers filed a complaint against the school with the NLRC after they wrote a letter to the management informing them of their violation to the Labor Code, but did not get a response.
The school, Reyes said, has two locations, one in Nichols Park, Guadalupe in Cebu City and another in Laray, Talisay City. He added that the CG Academy had changed its name to Blissful English School three years ago.
When the Talisay school branch was visited, however, a Korean named Daniel Park, manager of the Blissful English School, denied that any of their teachers were fired, or that they still have a connection to the CG English Academy. According to the school's head teacher, the two schools, had separated and they had no knowledge of whether the Cho family is still there.
Security Guards at the CG Academy, meanwhile, said that the Koreans had already left a week ago.
The teachers' lawyer, however, Atty. Mundlyn Misal Martin, said they are still planning to file a criminal case against the school's management and that they will also have the school blacklisted in the Philippines as well as in Korea. "Foreigners should not belittle Filipino workers," she said.
