AROUND 1,500 applicants look for work at the Labor Day job fair organized by DOLE. MARIANNE BERMUDEZ
IVAN Jonson was not just hired as a sales agent at a manufacturing company on Sunday, he was also given hope that this time, his employment would last longer than his previous ones.
The 26-year-old job seeker was among the 320 people hired on the spot during the annual job fair held at the World Trade Center in Pasay City by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in celebration of Labor Day.
A fresh graduate, Jonson said he has been hired twice—as an IT staffer for a company in Batangas City and as an office clerk. Both jobs, however, lasted just five months. “It’s hard to build a career when we have to start from scratch every five months,” he told the Inquirer.
Labor officials, meanwhile, said that unscrupulous and fly-by-night companies had been weeded out of the department’s job fairs nationwide.
A total of 167,000 job vacancies offered by 1,008 companies were up for grabs at this year’s event. In Metro Manila alone, about 37,000 job posts in 108 companies were available. “These are not ‘endo-type’ jobs,” Labor Undersecretary Nicon Fameronag in a press briefing on Sunday.
He was referring to the five-month contract practice prevalent in the construction, mall, hotel and restaurant sectors to avoid payment of social and health benefits due to regular workers. Under this scheme, a worker is fired after five months and then rehired for another five months by a subcontractor.