AN expert on labor relations on Friday said the government needs to “overhaul” the labor laws to accomplish President Duterte’s directive to end contractualization and provide security of tenure to Filipino workers.
Prof. Rene Ofreneo of the University of the Philippines’s School of Labor and Industrial Relations said the issue of contractualization would not be resolved by merely identifying policy gaps in the implementation of Department Order (DO) 18-A.
Earlier, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said it would try to identify gaps in the implementation of DO 18-A in its bid to end contractualization by 2017.
“But DO 18-A is only an implementing rule. To be able to address the issue of contractualization, the Labor Code itself and the other implementing rules would have to be overhauled,” Ofreneo told the BusinessMirror.
He said the government is too focused on ending “endo,” or the illegal practice of providing fixed-term employment to workers for successive periods of five months to defeat their constitutional right to security of tenure, which they would have gained after employment for more than six months in a position which is necessary and desirable to the usual business of the employer.
Ofreneo pointed out that there are other forms of contractualization that are still being practiced by employers throughout the country, and these forms are actually allowed under DO 18-A.
For example, a contractor or subcontractor may be able to hire workers to work for another corporation without violating the laws against labor-only contracting by merely having adequate capital of P3 million in the form of machinery, equipment, office space and other capital assets.
This allows contractors to hire workers who will not achieve regular status in the companies where they are actually rendering the service, although they could acquire regular status with respect to the contractor or subcontractor.
While the accreditation of contractors is currently suspended by the DOLE, Ofreneo said the DO 18-A should also be suspended in the meantime while the DOLE is studying how to achieve its goal to end contractualization.
He said the implementing rules had been changed many times since 1997, and yet, there have been no improvement in the rights enjoyed by workers. “They have to address the issue of why, in the hiring process, there has to be a distinction between regulars and nonregulars, then among the nonregulars there are also classifications, such as probationary employees and fixed-term employees,” Ofreneo said.
“In the end, the laws should just focus on giving equal rights to both regular employees and nonregular employees who have yet to be regularized but should have the same rights, such as the right to join a union and collectively bargain with their employers,” he added.