United Laboratories

History

After surviving World War II as buy-and-sell trader, in 1945, Jose Yao Campos and Mariano K. Tan started a small corner drugstore on Sto. Cristo Street in Manila’s Chinatown district (Binondo), calling the venture United Drug Co. A few years later, the drugstore had evolved into a pharmaceutical company, with a simple manufacturing setup at Campos residential compound. By 1959, fourteen years after its founding, Unilab had the largest market share in the Philippine pharmaceuticals industry.

Operations

Unilab develops, manufactures, and markets a wide range of prescription and consumer health products covering all major therapeutic categories. Many of these products are leading brands in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Myanmar. Unilab has facilities throughout Southeast Asia. Its major manufacturing complex is in Manila. It is the largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in the Philippines, with Philippine revenues comparable to its top three largest multinational competitors, combined. According to the company website, Unilab has also consistently maintained a 20-percent market share. Today, Unilab has affiliates in 10 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Corporate governance

Unilab is governed by Campos eldest daughter Jocelyn “Joy” Campos Hess, and Wharton-educated eldest grandson Clinton Campos Hess, vice chairman.

Labor practices

In the 1950s, while enrolled in a three-month course by the American Management Association, Campos attended a seminar by the president of McCormick, who explained how the giant food company never had labor problems in the decades of its existence due to its “Junior Board,” composed of managers and employees. This body was tasked to look after the welfare of employees and their families. Upon his return to the Philippines, Campos immediately organized a Junior Board for Unilab, with all members chosen by him and with the goal of ensuring workers’ welfare. It eventually became the Unilab Employees Council. Its labor force has never had a labor union like other large industrial firms in the Philippines or Southeast Asia.

All employees at Unilab receive a meal subsidy for lunch, and those who work overtime receive a free meal. As malnutrition is a concern in Manila, Unilab hires a dietician to ensure that the canteen meals are nutritionally balanced.

Unilab provides all regular employees with eleven 50-kg sacks of whole grain rice throughout the year, as a benefit above salary. Employees with children younger than five years old also receive one 400 gram can of powdered milk per child each month.

Corporate social responsibility

Since 2005, Unilab has had a partnership with Odyssey Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of food company CDO Foodsphere, to support Gabay Nutrisyon, a supplemental feeding program for poor children. Odyssey Foundation sponsors a community-based 64-day supplemental feeding program for malnourished children from low-income families in various parts of Luzon. Employees and volunteers from Unilab and Odyssey Foundation provide once-a-day hot meals. The target is to assist in feeding the children until their ideal weight is achieved. Unilab provides vitamins to supplement the feeding initiative.

In 2012, Unilab formed a partnership with the Quezon City government with the end goal of improving maternal health in the city, which has one of the highest numbers of maternal and child deaths in the country. “The majority of these deaths were a result of pregnancy complications during labor, delivery and the post-partum period. The most common causes of death included post-partum hemorrhage, hypertension, maternal malnutrition, unsafe abortions, severe infections and other medical complications resulting from poor birth spacing and other infections such as tuberculosis, diabetes and chronic hypertension,” Unilab said in a statement. It is to help arrest these trends that the partnership was formed. The interventions include the education of barangay health workers, public and private midwives, traditional birthing assistants (or hilots) and mothers themselves.

Also in 2012, Unilab and the Cebu provincial government signed a consignment agreement for Unilab to provide medicines in the provincial hospitals in the province. Under the agreement, hospitals will be provided Unilab medications and hospitals only pay for those medications which are consumed. Also, under the agreement, the price of the consigned medications are lower than their market sales price.