My Impression about my job...(...and, about our management...)

This was my speech during the TMC Service Award Ceremony (December 2008) almost two years ago. I can see with all that I have uttered that night, nothing much has changed in our management, especially in the Human Resource Management aspect. We are still being considered less important by the management. What can I possibly do, so that we can be compensated according to the type of job that we hold in this company?

I do not know whether what I would talk about in my impression would be proper, but I will assure you I am going to tell you my honest impression and true to the word personal assessment of my more than 5 years of employment under Taganito Mining Corporation.

My job as a Chemist of Assay Laboratory is by far the 4th and the longest employment I ever have had and I am wishing that I will now stop jumping from one employment to another. I have been with the Pilipinas Kao Inc. in Cagayan de Oro City, Coca-cola Bottllers’ Philipines in Zamboanga City, the Austrailian Agency for International Development. And now, I realized I do not have all the time in the world and certainly just as every person does, I want to enjoy the rest of my life in my hometown, and make the most of my time to grow more into a better and effective person with or without raising my own family. Well, the latter is a personal issue I will not delve with at the present moment.

Allow me to share my recent past just so I would be able to clearly explain the succeeding agenda that I have written on this speech. I made some comparison on my previous employer and on the present because I have seen and realize that there are issues that may seem like detrimental to my efficiency and productivity of the rest of other workers of this company and I believe these issues can be resolved and the corporate situation could somehow be enhanced for the benefit of the TMC organization. I am not trying to brag that I know better than the leaders of this company, I am just trying to give a personal impression on some points that we need to reconcile, because I believe that there is always hope regardless of the dire and seemingly cheap norms of predictions some of us here have made about the economic meltdown lead by the United States of America. Honestly I do not like the very notion that we are so much affected by this precarious economic situation. Most of my friends, Chemists and other professionals alike who are now working in the US, are trying to paint an optimistic scenario that the we are better off than what we fear, or we are at a better standing than the fear that is being constantly fed to us by those who presume they know better. I think there is some kind of a conspiracy to scare us, professional workers and the labor sector, I hope I am wrong to suspect the situation that is happening in the US is just cheaply used for the advantage of the financially-abled few.

Well, let me go back to my impression. If I have to compare my present standing with what I was more than five years ago, I would honestly say that I am almost, almost better off than I was then. Well, on certain things.

I started my job here with a meager salary that was way below half of what I was receiving on my previous employer. I only barely surpassed that rate given to me by the Managing Contractor of Australian Agency for International Development, which was then my employer, just only last August during our recent salary increase. It took me five years to even out my previous rate and by then, the cost of living is too much to sustain, plus now, the impending bad effects due to the so-called US-led economic crunch. Do you think I have got some sort of financial growth, personally?

Well, why did I choose to stay here in spite of the opportunities laid out before my very eyes for several times during my five-year stay in this company? Why would I “suffer” staying on unpromising job when I can choose to make my options open and settle for other lucrative jobs abroad or in any other major industries away from this place.

As I have confessed earlier, I have decided to settle in here, right here in my place where I grew up, where my family and relatives live long before the advent of this company, where I know there is an industry now that can offer me a job where my expertise and interests can be utilized well, and where I know there is a company or industry that can provide more. Yes, Taganito Mining Corporation can provide more. I believe in that ever since I first set my foot in this ground.

I would tell you what were my other realizations and hopes are.

You know, I am so proud I work here. I am proud not just because of the name this company bears but because of the very thing we are doing here in this place. In spite of the sad realizations to some aspects of my job that I encounter almost everyday, I can still grasp a speck of vigor to continue what I have been routinely doing at the Assay Laboratory because then I know in some iota of unspoken contribution, I have been part in the integral global development. Whenever I see a vehicle passing by the highway along our home, I would just think that probably the metals used to make that vehicle was originally taken/mined out from Taganito and processed somewhere else in Japan or other parts of the world; that probably the kitchen utensils and other office and household implements most of us are using daily might have been originally taken from this place and was just transformed into more useful forms. And whenever somebody/someone from outside this company would spread wrong information regarding the Mining Process that we are doing here, I cannot help but go all my way explaining to the extent of depending it. We are all aware that the TMC has been doing far more good than harm to the mainstream society and the environment. And this is because of these people who are here in this hall tonight. And I am glad I am a member of this crowd.

And yet, it is just a sad thing sometimes when we can feel that our efforts are deliberately not quite taken seriously. I would take a specific example to our section, the Assay Laboratory and Sample Prep House. Assay, just like any other laboratories in other industries, plays an important role in the industrial process. The laboratory is an institution that advises those at the line production that a certain business is doing well and is not girding beyond the limit of the specified acceptable operating procedures. In food industries for example, it is the lab that advises the operations people that the food to be released for market is of quality standards and would not pose a threat to the consumers. In pharmaceutical industries it is the lab that ascertains that the drugs and medicines released for market could help the health and life of the consumers. Just as it does maintain the quality products of other industrial firms which produce a wide spectrum of consumables and materials. I can go on and on but I would like to point out that specifically in our business, it is the lab, the Assay Laboratory that ascertains and advices the miners that the materials we are mining out are valuable. I would confess that I learned to my dismay, sorry to say this, we are under rated. Assay is a section that employs supervisors who do their jobs personally and does not depend too much on the subordinates to do their jobs done. It is the Chemists who do the Analytical Laboratory Process and the Lab Aides are just there to aide the work. Chemists are the actual working Supervisors and yet I realized our salaries are quite far below than the other Supervisors in other departments. I think now with the coming of Nickel Asia Corporation as a “think tank” and the implementator of the new management systems, this can be resolved. I think you need also to assess and audit whether the functions of the employees in this company are being addressed. You might realized that it is not only financial management where we need to focus our implementation of change, I also think the there is a need to re-evaluate the entire workforce as well and make this organization more efficient in the truest sense of the word.

I would humbly ask though that while you are at this we hope you will not bombard us carelessly for your effort of change. Recently, we felt like there is seemingly an absent of a quaint of hope we usually feel during parties such as this. For the passed five years that I have been hosting this event, I’d always be filled with so much hope that the next year would always be better. Now recently however, I would say that what I feel is quite the opposite. With the bonuses given in a way that is quite different from what we usually expected and the growing amount of taxes that we pay that is also way out of proportion from out benefits, and the absences of other usual perks next year, well, does anybody think we have the reason to celebrate?!

I would like to seek the attention of our corporate leaders, please we need someone at the top who could say otherwise. That there is hope to everyone in this hall tonight and make us more optimistic that while we are on this business we can do better than worrying for the coming years and who will assure us that TMC will survive. Just make the greater number of these employees cling to hope and containment.

I hope I am being heard tonight. Thank you and Merry Christmas to all…