ALU-TUCP push for the passage of House Bill 4444, which seeks to end contractualization. (CDN PHOTO/VICTOR ANTHONY V. SILVA)
Almost one year since President Rodrigo Duterte was elected to the country’s highest public office, workers are still clamoring for the fulfillment of the executive’s campaign promise to end all forms of labor contractualization.
Lawyer Jonas Asis, regional vice president of the Associated Labor Union-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) in Central Visayas, said they still have not seen the change they are calling for despite efforts on their part to meet halfway with the government.
“What we are looking for the is the campaign promise to end all forms of contractualization. The president is approaching his first year in office and that has yet to be fulfilled,” he told reporters on Monday, Labor Day.
Close to 2,000 ALU-TUCP members gathered in front of the Department of Labor and Employment in Central Visayas (DOLE-7) office along Gorordo Avenue on Monday morning to call for an end to contractualization or, in Filipino slang, the endo (end-of-contract) scheme.
Endo refers to a practice among some companies wherein contracts with workers are routinely ended on the fifth month to avoid having to regularize their employees.
At 7 a.m., the group began to march to Pier 1 in downtown Cebu City where the ALU-TUCP headquarters is located.
The protesting laborers held signboards expressing the group’s dissent to Department Order 174 issued by Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello as well as its desire to have House Bill 4444, which seeks to strengthen workers’ security of tenure, be passed into law.
ALU-TUCP also demanded that Secretary Bello step down for allowing endo to continue amid uproar from labor groups in the past year.
D.O. 174, which the labor department released in March, provides better deals for labor but still does not put an end to endo, as promised by President Duterte in his campaign.
Among the salient features of this issuance was the absolute prohibition on “labor-only” contracting, which refers to “an arrangement where the contractor who supplies workers to a principal does not have substantial capital or investment, and the workers recruited and placed by such person are performing activities which are directly related to the main business operation of the principal.”
Aside from this, the new policy also changed the definition of substantial capital contractors from paid-up capital or net worth of at least P3 million to P5 million.
“D.O. 174 is very frustrating. It is the same animal. It does not bring any change at all. If there is, there is only an increase in capitalization. But from what we know, after contractors show the amount to DOLE for purposes of registration or acquiring license, they withdraw that money,” said Asis.
The labor group also asked for the passage of House Bill 4444 or the Security of Tenure Act, a measure proposed by the TUCP party list “definitely prohibiting and criminalizing contractualization and all forms of fixed-term contracts.”
“Security of tenure is provided in the Labor Code, but HB 4444 seeks to strengthen it and end all forms of contractualization, a move that is in consonance with the campaign promise of the president,” Asis said.