Teachers say they’re victims of ‘endo,’ too

BAGUIO CITY—Saying they are also victims of “endo” (end of contract) violations, private school teachers have asked the House committee on labor to study the impact of contractualization on the education sector.

“Some teachers and professors are hired time and again to teach just 15 units or less every semester,” preventing them from being hired as full-time instructors or regular employees, said Ronald Taggaoa, vice president of the Union of Faculty and Employees of Saint Louis University here.

During a public hearing here early this month, members of the committee said they wanted feedback on pending measures to penalize labor contractualization or introduce labor regulation reforms.

Toward the end of the hearing, they asked the House secretariat to examine hiring procedures enforced by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) after Taggaoa aired his sector’s concerns. Private and state universities are overseen by CHEd.

“Our position is that the contractualization of teaching personnel should be prohibited except when a faculty member is hired temporarily to replace another teacher who is on study leave, sabbatical or maternity leave or any other similar valid reason,” Taggaoa said.

In some cases, some administrators reduce the teaching load of temporary teachers so the school would not be obligated to put them on regular payroll, he said.

In a Nov. 25 letter to Labor  Secretary Silvestre Bello III, Taggaoa and other teachers, who belong to the union, said endo violations rose when colleges confronted the impact of the K-12 (Kindergarten to Grade 12) basic education program that extended high school by two more years.

They said some schools practiced endo or resorted to retrenchments to cope with the absence of freshmen until 2018.

The House committee also said it would explore endo violations that may have been committed by the government, which has employed 260,000 contractual workers. —VINCENT CABREZA