MANILA – Department of Labor and Employment secretary Silvestre Bello III on Thursday said the agency is expecting massive regularization contractual workers this month.
“We are confident that this agreement will set the stage for the massive regularization to be voluntarily initiated by the rest of the employers nationwide,” Bello said in a statement.
He was referring to the Memorandum of Agreement on the National Voluntary Regularization Plan, which will be signed Friday and will initially cover 220,000 workers.
Earlier Bello forged an agreement with the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECoP) on the implementation of a voluntary regularization plan.
This will include the regularization of workers who are believed to be employed under illegal contracting arrangements.
The MOA covers 30 to 40 percent of workers from 3,200 pre-identified establishments, mostly ECoP members.
SM Malls and Jollibeee Foods Corp. are among other companies that submitted their voluntary regularization plan.
As of December last year, the DOLE’s campaign against “endo” (end of contract contractualization) helped the regularization of 413,940 workers, of which 291,612 were voluntarily regularized by their employers, and 122,328 secured their employment through labor inspections and assessment. (GMA News)
