MANILA, Philippines — Labor groups said they were no longer surprised by a presidential adviser’s announcement that banning “endo” or labor contractualization was no longer a priority of President Rodrigo Duterte in his final year in office.
Since 2019, they said, Duterte has shown that his campaign promise to end the practice of endo (end of contract) for workers who are denied regular employment status was a “farce.”
“Workers no longer expect anything from President Duterte after that shameful veto of the [Security of Tenure] bill in 2019,” said lawyer Sonny Matula, chair of Nagkaisa coalition and president of the Federation of Free Workers.
Renato Magtubo, chair of Partido Manggagawa, said the announcement merely confirmed that Mr. Duterte had deceived workers from the start.
“In the first place, Duterte’s ‘end endo’ pledge in 2016 is a farce that’s ridiculously hard to keep for a procapitalist politician,” Magtubo said.
“Since workers had been deceived by Duterte, workers will now campaign for end-Duterte,” he added.
READ: Anti-‘endo’ bill not a Duterte priority, Palace says
Jacinto Paras, presidential legislative assistant and adviser for political affairs, said last week that the proposed anti-endo law was not high in Duterte’s list of priorities.
He said because of the controversy when the President vetoed the Security of Tenure bill in 2019, “all the sectors have not been voicing out their opinions on this, even the Department of Labor and Employment.”
Matula said if Paras thought that labor groups had been silent against labor contractualization, it was because “we believe that restating a truckload of arguments against endo will not rectify a farce.”
Contractualization has become more rampant during the pandemic, according to Matula.
The Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PS-Link) said the number of “job orders” and “contract of service” employees in the public sector ballooned to nearly a million under Duterte’s term.
“What can you expect from a President who not only allows contractualization in his own backyard but encourages it,” said Annie Geron, president of PS-Link.