Dole to submit next week own version of SOT bill

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) will submit to Malacañang next week its own version of the security of tenure (SOT) bill, which would address, among others, the business sector’s concerns on the proposed body that will determine the jobs allowed to be outsourced.

‘Clearer provisions’

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said the new version of the measure, which would have “clearer and more focused provisions to provide security of tenure to workers,” would be presented to the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council’s meeting on Monday.

“[T]he intention of the President is really to secure our workers in their employment — contrary to the perception that he abandoned his promise to our workers,” Bello told reporters on Monday.

He noted that the meeting was called to ensure that the new bill would not suffer the same fate as the SOT bill vetoed by President Duterte on Friday last week, a day before it should have lapsed into law.

According to Assistant Labor Secretary Benjo Benavidez, one of the key provisions that they will reexamine is the creation of a tripartite body that will determine the regular jobs in a company, which the business sector was opposed to.

“They said that it is undue delegation,” Benavidez said of the sector’s concern on the council, which if formed would have representatives from the government, labor and business.

Continue the fight

Sen. Joel Villanueva, for his part, is not about to give up the fight to terminate contractualization in the country as he refiled on Monday the much-awaited measure seeking to provide employment security for the Filipino workforce.

“It’s part of our job to continue the fight that we think will change the status quo and improve the conditions of our workers,” Villanueva told reporters shortly after submitting Senate Bill No. 806.

Villanueva said the latest version of the SOT bill contained the exact provisions that Malacañang had transmitted to the Senate last year, but was rejected by the President.

Asked why he filed a measure identical to the one that Mr. Duterte had already thumbed down, he said: “It’s because we wanted to find out from the President’s men, who influenced him to veto the bill, to pinpoint which particular provisions were problematic for them.”

“I just want to reiterate that the very definition of labor-only contracting that the President certified as urgent and a priority is exactly the same as the one on the document submitted to the President’s table, but which he vetoed,” he added.

Told that he may just be wasting his time in pushing for a similar bill, he said: “I would rather fight for it because I know this is what is right.”

Meanwhile, labor groups that trooped to Mendiola in Manila on Monday said President Duterte’s veto on the SOT bill showed that he was “antiworker and procapitalist.”

No compassion for workers

Kilusang Mayo Uno secretary general Jerome Adonis said the President followed what businessmen dictate and had no compassion for workers, considering that the SOT bill was already a “watered-down” version of the measure.

“Our position as workers is that we want the ban on employment agencies. Millions of workers are employed in agencies and this is where they experience different forms of abuses like low wage and lack of benefits to sexual harassment,” Adonis said.