President Rodrigo Duterte. MALACAÑANG POOL PHOTO
The National Anti-Poverty Commission’s Formal Labor and Migrant Workers Sector (NAPC-FLMWS) on Thursday called on newly sworn-in President Rodrigo Duterte to fulfill his campaign promise of ending labor contractualization “without compromise.”
In a statement, the NAPC-FLMWS said it found a “flicker of hope” in Duterte’s motherhood pronouncement in the campaign trail that “contractualization must go” and that he was “not open to compromise.”
READ: Duterte vows to stop contractualization
But the group raised alarm over the statement of new Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III that he was preparing a department order requiring companies to regularize its employees in an 80%-20-% arrangement, or 8 out of 10 permanent employees while two will remain irregular.
READ: Duterte’s labor usec vows to stop ‘endo’
“As an alter ego of the president, Secretary Bello III should heed the incoming President’s exact tenor of the promise he made to the masses: contractualization must end without compromise. Such arrangement will only legitimize precarious employment. No matter how small the gap is—80:20, 90:10 or even 95:5—there are still space, a chance or window of opportunity for employers to strike and exploit it,” the group said.
“Needless to say, the employers will just abuse the proposed policy as they will circumvent it again and again as previously done in the past. Unless the incoming administration will make a drastic action to counter this employment regime, this will likely to continue especially with the proliferation of the so-called manpower cooperatives where its workers, in disguised as associate members, are being sold as cheap commodity,” it added.
The NAPC-FLMWS said a “sweeping institutional reform” was needed to fulfill Duterte’s promise of decent and humane working conditions, in the form of an order that would ban the practice of contractualization and “close the gap for good.”
The group urged Duterte to meet the leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives to submit the security of tenure bill as a priority measure in his administration.
“After the passage of new legislation, immediately hold a series of consultations with the labor sector for the issuance of entirely new implementing rules that will guarantee the security of tenure of all workers by monitoring and prosecuting the violators, individual and establishment,” it added. RAM
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