THE INSTITUTE FOR Labor Studies, along with other offices and bureaus of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), participated in the three-day Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) Seminar Workshop conducted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) from March 12 to 14, 2014 at the Taal Vista Hotel, Tagaytay City.
The seminar workshop, as one of the components of the ADB’s technical assistance for the DOLE’s Employment Facilitation for Inclusive Growth (EFIG), aimed to train and capacitate DOLE technical staff and employees on labor policy analysis, impact evaluation, policy framework development and labor market governance systems.
Labor Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz emphasized in her keynote message the need for DOLE to ensure the right balance and the quality and responsiveness of its labor and employment regulations and policies by improving its regulatory environment and processes.
“I hope that through this RIA, we, at the DOLE, can design labor and employment regulatory framework that is neither too relaxed as to remove or impair the constitutional and legal safeguards for our workers and employers, nor too rigid to as to serve as disincentives for our clients”, the Labor Chief said.
Meanwhile, ILS Executive Director Cynthia R. Cruz provided the overview of the RIA seminar-workshop, during which she reminded the participants that the purpose of the RIA workshop is to help capacitate the technical staff of DOLE by providing them the needed analytical skills and tools.
During the three-day seminar workshop, RIA specialists, experts and consultants such as Mr. Kelly Bird of ADB, Atty. Benedicto Ernesto Bitonio, Ms. Alejandra Cox of the California State University, and Mr. Peter Phillips, also of the ADB, discussed key and important principles and tools for regulatory analysis. In particular, the participants were given trainings and exercises on cost-benefit analysis in measuring the costs and impacts of labor regulations to both workers and companies, in the long-run. Such process was applied in the formulation of Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) for each of the ten (10) RIA areas namely: 1) Security of Tenure; 2) Apprenticeship; 3) Overseas Employment; 4) Article 40- Positive List; 5) Employment Insurance; 6) Productivity; 7) Public Employment Service Office (PESO); 8) Magna Carta for Seafarers; 9) Private Recruitment and Placement Agency (PRPA); and 10) Special Employment of Students (SPES).
The three-day training ended with the presentations of the workshop outputs to Secretary Baldoz.
(For more information on this press release please contact Ms. Brenalyn Peji and Mr. Bryan M. Balco, Advocacy and Publications Division, Institute for Labor Studies, Telephone Nos. 527-3490/527-3447)