Duterte tells employers: Improve lives of workers

As both employers and employees reel from the economic effects of the prolonged lockdown to contain the new coronavirus, President Rodrigo Duterte urged businessmen to provide “humane working conditions” to their workers.

In his Labor Day message, the President pointed out that the hard work of Filipino workers “serve as the very foundation of our nation’s prosperity and growth.”

“I thus remind everyone in the business sector of their shared responsibility in improving the lives of our workers by providing them stable career opportunities and humane working conditions,” Mr. Duterte said on Friday.

He also reaffirmed the government’s commitment to safeguard workers’ rights “through the humanization of laws and the equalization of social forces.”

“As all work is vital in forging a more inclusive and more progressive Philippines, may each and every Filipino rightfully enjoy the fruits of their labor and lead more productive and dignified lives,” the President added.

Online protests

He issued the statement as workers’ groups took to cyberspace on Friday in the first online Labor Day protests, amid the COVID-19 crisis that forced the government to ban all mass gatherings.

In 2019, Mr. Duterte rejected a security of tenure bill passed by Congress.

He said it “unduly broadens the scope and definition of prohibited labor-only contracting” and prescribed “forms of contractualization that are not particularly unfavorable to the employees involved.”