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AN
amicable settlement between faculty and management of
Asia’s premier business school has been pushed further
back as both groups continue to file suits and
countersuits.
“It’s
[dispute] bigger than all of us,” Asian Institute of
Management (AIM) Faculty Association (AFA) president
Emmanuel Leyco told reporters in a press conference on
Tuesday.
Leyco
said the letter to AIM management, represented by
president and former investment banker Francis Estrada,
asking for a dialogue remained unanswered for a week.
Tuesday
was the last day of Leyco’s and colleague Victor
Limlingan’s one-year suspension. On that day, Leyco said
the AFA also filed a petition for certiorari with the
National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC).
The NLRC
ruled that AIM was guilty of unfair labor practice, a
decision that Leyco said AIM management has appealed.
Meanwhile, AIM vice president for administration Joaquin
Montenegro told the BusinessMirror that the matter of
“tenure is a topic that would take a long discussion.”
Montenegro added that both Leyco and Limlingan’s
suspension is over and “they are back to work today.”
When
asked if the management is open to sit down with AFA,
Montenegro said, “Naturally, all parties would want this
matter to be settled amicably. But if only it could be
as simple as that.”
“We’re
not after the money,” Limlingan told reporters in one of
the school’s rooms in Makati City. “We want everybody to
swallow his pride and find out how this could be settled
like professionals.”
Leyco
said AFA is willing to smoke the peace pipe “if the AIM
management ensures that academic freedom in the
classroom is protected.”
Respecting the principle of tenure would ensure this is
observed, Leyco added.
Tenure
commonly refers to life tenure in a job, specifically to
a senior academic’s contractual right not to be fired
without cause, web encyclopedia Wikipedia says.
The
Unesco, on the other hand, defines tenure as an
“essential safeguard mechanism to protect academic
freedom and against arbitrariness.”
Leyco
said his and Limlingan’s suspension last year was
arbitrary for tenured professors like them.
The AIM
has said they suspended the teachers for distributing a
letter to the AIM governors and trustees. The letter
informed the board that the school has not earmarked the
amount prescribed by Republic Act 6728 as share of
faculty and staff in the tuition increases.
Limlingan said the amount is nearly a billion pesos for
the AIM’s 44 actual teaching staff.
Leyco
said the AIM’s argument that it hasn’t increased tuition
is “misleading.”
“We get
paid in pesos, but the tuition is in dollars. So,
technically, if the peso weakens, the tuition increases;
and we haven’t benefited from the exchange-rate impact,”
he added.
Leyco
said the starting monthly salary of a professor is
P35,000.
He said
that management’s suspension of tenured professors like
them sends a wrong signal to teachers as well as
students.
Leyco
added they are worried that management of other
universities would use the AIM case as precedent.
“How can
a teacher teach without fear [when] any time management
can dismiss or suspend them because they didn’t like
what the professor is teaching?”
This is
why, Leyco said, they are willing to continue with the
legal cases, especially on their illegal suspension.
However, Leyco said they are also willing to work out
something with management and just go back to teaching.
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