Business leader asks Duterte:  Remove ‘communists’ in gov’t

Donald Dee of the Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (Photo from the official website of ECOP at www.ecop.ph.org)

MANILA — A business leader called on President Rodrigo Duterte to weed out the communists in his administration for being too fixated in spreading their ideology rather than doing their duties, such as creating jobs.

Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) chair emeritus Donald  Dee said in a brieifing in Malacañang: “There are people like that that we should…maybe a hundred days is not enough for them to gel,  but some people will never gel and I hope the President will get rid of them.”

Although he did not name names, Dee was alluding to Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III and his undersecretary, Joel Maglunsod, a militant labor leader and former Anakpawi party-list representative, both of whom have pushed for a P125-hike in the minimium daily wage.

“I’m very critical here of the individual who comes and says,  we will do a P125 across the board increase.’ You know, and then he follows by saying, ‘this is my personal opinion’,” said Dee.

As senior government officials, Dee said they have lost the right to make this kind of public statements. Dee said these officials have not even done their math on the implications of a P125 wage hike for 7.7 million minimume wage earners,”roughly P1 billion in additional costs a day for businessmen.

Dee said the P125 daily wage hike would triple inflation to 6.5 percent and leftist proponents could not care less if tricycle drivers and other self-employed Filipinos would suffer the burden.

Dee said that these leftist ideologues were in the Cabinet not to promote and support the President’s policy of job creation but were there “in order to implement their own philosophical stuff.”

While businessmen opposed the wage hike, Dee said that business groups were ready to police their own ranks to stop “endo” or contractualization where employees were hired on five-month contracts to avoid paying regular wages and perks.

“Anybody who is practicing ‘endo’ will be removed from our membership list. This we promise the President,” said Dee referring to ECOP and the Management Association of the Philippines.

Dee said the Department of Labor and Employment should clarfiy its policy on “endo,” especially on what constituted security of tenure.

“For the DOLE, security of tenure is lifetime work. That’s not it. Security of tenure simply means that you do not remove any employees without just cause and without following a process, you know,” said Dee.

“I think you should be grateful. Out of close to 38 million workers, only 7.7 million are in the formal sector. Of those in the formal sector, how many do you think get retirement?  Most companies do not fund retirement. When it is paying time, they find ways and means to cut off the worker. This time, you know, because of the President’s insistence, you will going to see retirement funded,” said Dee.  SFM