Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye formally announced the appointment of former Court of Appeals Associate Justice Arturo D. Brion as the next Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) secretary.

Brion will replace former labor Sectary Patricia Sto. Tomas, who was, on the other hand, become the chair of the Development Bank of the Philippines.

Brion, former labor and foreign affairs undersecretary and bar top-notcher, will take over the labor portfolio on July 3.

He graduated cum laude and was valedictorian of the Class of 1974 of Ateneo de Manila College of Law. He ranked first in the 1974 bar exams with a grade of 91.65 percent. He took his master of laws specializing in labor law at York University in Canada where he practiced law for three years.

Brion was a senior partner at the Siguion Reyna Montecillo & Ongsiako law office specializing in labor law before he joins the government in 2001. He headed DOLE’s labor relations cluster from March 2001 to July 2002, before he became foreign affairs undersecretary for special projects on August 2002 to June 2003.

He said in an interview that he will prioritize to study the programs and policies that former secretary Sto. Tomas had passed during the five years that she headed the Department of Labor and Employment.

He also said that he wants to bring down the strike rate further through an intensified program of dispute prevention, mediation and voluntary arbitration.

“I am taking over [from] a successful labor secretary and I would like to maintain her legacy of peaceful labor and management relations to keep the number of strikes to a minimum,” Brion said.

According to Brion, the biggest challenge during his term would be said industrial peace.

“This to my mind is the biggest hindrance to progress. I’m really glad that employers are not averse to giving a wage increase now in the face of rising oil prices as long as this is not done through legislation,” said Brion, who became associate justice of the appellate court in July 2003.

However, not everybody was glad with Brion’s appointment as new labor chief. A militant group expressed their disappointment saying that he had a poor image as a champion of workers’ rights.

The Alliance of Progressive Labor said it did not like how Brion dealt labor groups and handled cases when he was labor undersecretary.

“We’re not happy with him, but we would be happy to be proven wrong,” said APL secretary general Josua Mata in a phone interview.

According to Mata, the group hoped that Brion would be better than Sto. Tomas whose performance they judged as “dismal.”