Profile :: The Honorable
ARTURO D. BRION
Tel#: 527-2116; 527-2118 | Email: osec@dole.gov.ph
Website: www.dole.gov.ph
Labor and Employment Secretary Arturo D. Brion is a lawyer
by training and experience, with years of hands on exposure
in labor relations and, in his later years inthe Department,
in employment.
Brion came to the Department academically prepared. He
topped the Bar examinations of 1974 with a grade of 91.65%
after finishing his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) at the Ateneo
University as Cum Laude, Class Valedictorian, and recipient
of the Ateneo’s Gold Medal for Academic Excellence.
He was born in Manila on December 29, 1946 to Edon B. Brion
(a retired trial court judge) and Laura S. Dizon. He grew
up and undertook his primary, secondary and part of his
tertiary studies in San Pablo City, a mainly agricultural
community 87 kilometers southwest of Manila. Life for him
in San Pablo was uncomplicated and serene, and he carries
his simple provincial ways even to this day.
The Labor Department Chief is adept both in numbers and
in words. Prior to his law degree, Brion finished Bachelor
of Arts, majoring in Mathematics, at the San Pablo Colleges.
He was, however, destined to go beyond numbers and became
a lawyer in 1974. His ease and skill with words were tested
as Editor-in-Chief of the Ateneo Law Journal, and much later,
at the Legal Services of the Ontario Ministry of Labour
when he edited the Legal Update, the technical publication
of that office. Interestingly, Brion is not alone in his
family in his mixed interests in law and mathematics. His
wife, Antonietta, is a chemist-lawyer (B.S. Chem, College
of the Holy Spirit, and LL.B., Ateneo Law School), while
his son, Arturo, Jr., is a computer engineer-lawyer (Computer
Engineering, McMaster University, Ontario; LL.B., University
of New Brunswick School of Law) engaged in Intellectual
Property Law practice in Ottawa. His other child, Antonella,
is a B.S. History graduate at York University (Toronto),
but is now into computers.
After his Bar exam in 1975, Brion practised law at the
Siguon Reyna, Montecillo, and Ongsiako Law Offices. The
call to public service beckoned seven years later when he
joined the Philippine Ministry of Labor (under Minister
of Labor Blas F. Ople) as Executive Director of the Institute
of Labor and Manpower Studies (ILMS). The ILMS was the research,
training and policy formulation arm of the Ministry. He
left the Ministry in 1984 to run for the position of Assemblyman
in the Philippine National Assembly. He won and, after election,
returned to the Ministry of Labor as Deputy Minister for
Legal and Legislative Affairs. He served in the Philippine
National Assembly as the labor and employment committee
vice-chair, and as member of the committee on revision of
laws and constitutional amendments.
In 1986, Brion returned to private law practice with the
Natividad, Delos Reyes, Maambong and Brion, but soon left
private practice to be with his family in Canada where his
children completed their tertiary education.
Brion continued to pursue his interest in law and in labor
in Canada. He took up masteral studies in law at the York
University Osgoode Hall while completing his law equivalency
program to qualify him for law practice in Ontario. His
masteral thesis was “The Right to Refuse Unsafe Work
in Ontario,” underscoring his dedication to the cause
of workers’ welfare. He subsequently worked as Solicitor
at the Legal Services Branch of the Ontario Ministry of
Labour and at the Ontario Management Board Secretariat.
Unable to shake off thoughts of his homeland and of the
role he could possibly play in its development, Brion returned
to the Philippines in 1995. He initially went back to the
practice of law at his old law firm - the Siguion Reyna,
Montecillo, and Ongsiako Law Offices - from where he retired
in 2001. The public service welcomed him back in March 2001
as Undersecretary for Labor Relations at the Department
of Labor and Employment – the area of public service
closest to his heart.
When his oldtime mentor, then Senator Blas F. Ople, left
the Philippine Senate to head the Department of Foreign
Affairs, Ople tapped Brion as his Undersecretary for Special
Concerns, one of the leading special concerns then being
the absentee voting for overseas Filipinos. From this assignment,
Brion was subsequently elevated to the Court of Appeals
as Associate Justice in 2003. He had his second homecoming
with DOLE when he was handpicked in July 2006 to occupy
the post vacated by former Labor and Employment Secretary
Patricia A. Sto. Tomas, another Ople protégé.
“I am opting for the DOLE,” he said when made
to choose between the relative comfort and security of the
appellate court, and the tenurial uncertainties of a cabinet
position in a Department whose concerns and responsibilities
are now worldwide because of the overseas Filipino workers
whose recruitment, placement and welfare the Department
regulates. Brion easily qualifies for this post, however,
because he comes to the position after having served all
three branches of government – the Executive, the
Legislative and the Judiciary – in senior positions.
Even if only in that respect, he is unique in the Philippine
public service.
Brion is affiliated with the Integrated Bar of the Philippines
(IBP), the Philippine Bar Association, and, while in Canada,
with the Law Society of Upper Canada. He was the chapter
president of the IBP chapter in Laguna in 1981-1983. He
taught at the Ateneo University College of Law and at the
Far Eastern University Institute of Law at various times,
becoming the Bar Examiner in Political and International
Law in 2004. He also briefly served in 1976 as consultant
at the Civil Service Commission on public sector unionism.
He says that his vision for public sector unionism, outlined
in his paper “Public Sector Unionism – a Proposed
Configuration”, remains a dream but he believes that
his ideas, sooner or later, will become relevant and will
come to pass
He is guided by two standards in dealing with the private
sector unionism that he now regulates. He believes that
the standards of balance and fairness, if properly and steadfastly
applied, cannot but lead to the industrial peace and harmony
that the Philippines needs in its quest for economic stability
and progress.
