The price of “no”

12 January 2007

Sofie used to be accounting manager of a thrift bank based in Tagaytay City. She was hardworking and had simple dreams for her three-year-old daughter. Now she is jobless. She also has to commute to Manila every time there is a meeting or a conference for the labor case she has filed against the prominent family that owns the bank that used to employ her.

Friends are telling her to just drop the case, focus on finding a new job, and get on with her life. After all, not a few people have remarked she had little chance of winning against this formidable family. “Parang pader ang kalaban ko, sabi nila.” But Sofie chooses to fight. She has hurdled many battles in the past. Why stop now?

**

It was the middle of 2006 when trouble started brewing in the bank. Acting on talk that there were some irregularities in the bank’s operations, the bank’s owners conducted an internal audit. The process was conducted hastily and did not provide management with the opportunity to answer questions. During the stockholders’meeting held in late June, the bank president was no longer elected as a member of the Board of Directors. The main accusation was that this president had caused the window-dressing of the bank’s financial statements for 2005. The audited statements showed an income —the first since the family bought into the bank several years ago.

The wife of the majority stockholder took over as officer-in-charge. A reorganization was done. The owners appointed a de-facto general manager whose job description was loosely defined. After these corporate movements, the employees thought that the period of tension was over. The dust had settled, so they thought, and everything was back to normal.

Imagine Sofie’s surprise when one afternoon, she was called into the room of the general manager. He asked her who instructed her to book some accounts in the financial statements at fair market value instead of at cost. She told him it was the external auditing firm who had advised—no, required—her to do so, because some accounting standards had taken effect as of January 2005.

The manager did not seem happy with Sofie’s answer. “Are you sure it was not [the former president] who instructed you to book at fair market value?” She was aghast at the insinuation. How could anybody give such an instruction when it was the audit firm who prepared the document? In fact, the audit firm submitted the draft statements for management signature only at the eleventh hour—precisely at 5:59 p.m. on April 12, 2006, just to beat the deadline.

Becoming increasingly desperate, the manager relayed a message from a known trusted ally of the family. Sofie was told she should prepare a memorandum for the record, addressed to this ally of the family, that all of the questioned items in the financial statements were made upon the specific instructions of the former bank president.

She did not write the memo. They were asking her to lie and put that lie on record. She also knew that they were just attempting to use her to pin down the former president. She would not let herself be used, and her conscience would not allow her to attribute a wrongdoing to someone who was innocent to the best of her knowledge.

She knew that the owners had been trying to find proof of any wrongdoing but they have not been successful. If she wrote that memo, she would be giving them manna from heaven.

Sofie also could not fathom why anybody, owners especially, would be so unhappy about a net income that they would exhaust all means to reverse that income and reflect a loss.

The systematic attack came a few days after Sofie’s refusal to “cooperate.” Once, the general manager went to her office, fuming and shouting that she was a liar— all within earshot of her staff. In another occasion, she was asked by the officer-in-charge to see her in her Makati office. Here she was once again grilled on the booking of said account. Sofie’s answer remained the same and she told the oic that she would tell the central bank examiner and anyone else who asked that it was the external auditors, and not the former president, who gave her the instructions because it was the truth. The OIC asked her where her loyalties lay and then stormed out of the room, mad as hell.

Occasionally, there were remarks on her competence and accusations that the former bank president was supporting her financially. There were snide remarks on her being a born-again Christian. Sofie noticed that some people—friends and lunch buddies she has had for years— began distancing themselves from her.

Sofie became saddened by the changes in behavior. Then again, she tried to put herself in her friends’ shoes. She thought perhaps they needed their jobs too much that they would not do anything to risk that security. Sofie went about doing her job in her quiet, diligent way.

She was asked to turn over all files and passwords to all accounts. She was stripped of her signing authority. Members of her staff were asked to report to other bank officers instead of to her. She knew they wanted her to resign. But she did not. She needed a job and she did not do anything wrong. She sought, however, the advice of some lawyers for her constructive dismissal. Eventually she filed a case with the National Labor Relations Commission.

Of course, the owners were enraged at this complaint. They made good their threat to terminate her (Sofie was told as early as August—way before she had filed for constructive dismissal, that they have already prepared her termination letter) on grounds of “serious misconduct or willful disobedience of management’s lawful orders, and fraud or willful breach of trust.”

**

There is no assurance how long the trial would go or how the decision would be. The odds are against Sofie, who, without a prominent surname, is a virtual nobody. Going forward, she has started searching for a job. She has sent out some applications over the Internet, and well-meaning friends have given referrals and recommendations. But these are difficult times. At 30, finding a job is not as easy as when one is 21 and fresh out of college.

What keeps her going, then? Sofie is an uncanny optimist. She believes in the justice system in the Philippines, that there remain upright, honest people who are not intimidated by power or money. She believes that the mighty and the wealthy don’t get their way all the time— especially when they trample upon a few lowly ones along the way. She believes in natural law, in the ultimate triumph of good over evil.

How refreshing that someone could still be this much of an idealist nowadays