Labor groups nix Dole order on ‘endo’

LABOR Secretary Silvestre Bello III INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

Labor groups have rejected the proposed new policy of the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) on contractualization.

“The draft department order will not lead to the ultimate end but rather to the further strengthening of the legal standing of contractualization in the country,” the country’s major labor groups under the labor coalition Nagkaisa said in a statement on Monday.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III is expected to release Department Order (DO) No. 30 on Dec. 28.

The order is seen to be a strict implementation of the law on contractualization or job contracts in the Philippines.

It will replace DO 18-A, or the rules implementing Articles 106 to 109 of the Labor Code.

The draft of the DO 30 was presented during the Tripartite Executive Committee of the Tripartite Industrial Peace Council last week.

According to the labor groups, the new order recognizes the trilateral employment relationship, which has long been opposed by organized labor because it undermines workers’ rights to security of tenure, to organize and collectively bargain.

“[The] Dole intends to adopt what all labor groups unanimously rejected during the labor summit—the ‘win-win solution’ of [the] Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). This could signal the end of President Duterte’s campaign promise to end endo,” Danny Edralin, vice chair for the private sector of the Sentro ng Nagkakaisang Manggagawa or Sentro, said on Monday.

“The draft [order] may seem to restrict labor contracting to seasonal and project employment, but these employment schemes may be extended to cover jobs, work or services [that] are directly related to the business operations of a company. As such, contractualization of labor would still proliferate in the guise of describing the job, work or service as seasonal or project employment,” said Partido Manggagawa chair Renato Magtubo.

For the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), the proposed order is unacceptable.
Gives nothing new
“It is a mere rehash of what current laws already provide. It gives nothing new to workers. Change requires a [department order] that further restricts contractualization while a new law is needed to end contractualization,” said Luis Corral, executive director of the TUCP.

The Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) wanted to directly challenge President Duterte to completely prohibit endo by means of an executive order.

“The … draft [order] is a mere attempt to rehash DO 18-A with sophisticated words to continue justifying contractualization under the Duterte regime. Thus, [the] BMP now directly challenges President Duterte to immediately issue an executive order to strictly prohibit all forms of contractualization by urgently signing a draft executive order [that the] BMP crafted and submitted to the Office of the President [on] Nov. 10, 2016, for instant presidential executive action,” said BMP president, Leody de Guzman.

The Dole reviewed DO 18-A after receiving complaints from workers’ groups that the order contained loopholes that legitimized a contractual arrangement as long as contractors and subcontractors complied with requirements, such as P3 million in captalization.

Labor Undersecretary Dominador Say earlier told reporters that some of the provisions of DO 18-A, which was implemented during the previous administration to regulate contractualization, did not comply with the provisions of the Labor Code.

“There will be no status quo because some of the provisions of [DO] 18-A went beyond what is allowed by the law. We are purging this so the new policy will be a strict observance of the law,” Say said.