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EDITORIAL
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February 7, 2018
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MALACAÑANG has invited labor groups to a dialogue with the President today. An executive order on contractualization is reportedly one of the items on the agenda.
For over 20 years, the government has been regulating contractualization by allowing agency-hiring and other forms of trilateral employment relations which only resulted to the proliferation of fraudulent forms of contractualization like “endo” and labor-only contracting.
What happens today would be interesting to monitor. In an encouraging display of labor unity not seen in the Philippines in decades, labor groups from the widest range of ideological backgrounds are arm-in-arm as they jointly urge President Duterte to issue an executive order that will put a stop to contractualization.
Leaders of the Nagkaisa! Labor Coalition and Kilusang Mayo Uno, who have varied views on a wide range of labor and employment issues, are one in putting a stop to contractualization and other schemes being used to avoid regularizing workers.
Nagkaisa! is the largest labor coalition in the country with over 40 trade union centers, labor federations and workers’ associations while KMU is described as a militant and anti-imperialist national labor center.
“It’s about time the President makes good on his vow to end contractualization and stay true to his commitment to us during our last dialogue on Labor Day to issue an Executive Order to fulfill this promise,” KMU and Nagkaisa! said in a joint statement.
On Labor Day in Davao last year, Duterte asked labor groups to draft an executive order within 10 days, which he would sign. KMU and Nagkaisa! submitted a common draft a few days after the meeting. It was only in the last couple of months, though, when the Department of Labor and Employment facilitated discussions with both labor and employers on the issuance.
In the discussions, KMU and Nagkaisa! agreed to a version of the proposed EO which says that, “Contracting or subcontracting when undertaken to circumvent the worker’s rights to security of tenure, self-organization, collective bargaining and peaceful concerted activities pursuant to the 1987 Philippine Constitution is hereby strictly prohibited.”
Both agreed, too, that the same issuance should provide that, “Security of tenure refers to the direct hiring relationship between the principal employer and employee.”
Labor groups want the President to issue an executive order prohibiting all forms of contractualization based on the position they submitted. Will he accommodate them? Or does he have ideas of his own?
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