Bulacan Sen. Emmanuel Joel J. Villanueva last Sunday lauded the recent move of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) to end the practice of endo by giving longer contracts to its employees. He urged other government agencies to follow suit.
Endo is a term used to mean terminating part-time employees at the end of their contrct.
Last Saturday the Manila International Airport Authority, the government agency responsible for the management of Naia, gave its 1,057 building attendants three-year contracts that will entitle them to 13th-month pay, health benefits and social insurance, among other benefits. The contracts are renewable every three years.
“We commend the Naia administration for establishing arrangements to increase the tenure and benefits of its short-term workers. We know the three-year arrangement is far from perfect, but the agency’s move is reflective of their desire to gradually remove the practice of short-term endo,” said Villanueva, chairman of the Senate committee on labor, employment and human-resource development.
Before the move, the Naia’s building attendants were employed under a “job order” contract. These employees did not have security of tenure, which meant they were liable to be terminated any time.
Among their main duties are cleaning floors, concourses and the 250 toilets at the Naia complex; maintaining gardens, parking spaces and offices; and running interoffice errands.
Many of them have been serving at the airport for 10 to 15 years as short-term contractual workers under different service contractors.
Villanueva welcomed this development, yet emphasized the need for legislating laws that will ensure workers’ security of tenure and scrap the endo scheme.
At the start of his term as a senator, Villanueva filed Senate Bill 1116 or the End of Endo or Contractualization Act of 2016, which seeks to provide security of tenure for workers, protect workers’ welfare by ensuring regularity of their salary and benefits and ensure the exercise of workers’ right to organize.
“I hope this development in the Naia will encourage other agencies to follow suit in phasing out the detestable practice and granting regularization to its contractual employees,” Villanueva said. “We have to put safeguards against blurring of employer-employee relationship and the circumvention of the law on security of tenure. A law is urgently needed that will protect and regularize workers and will ensure their entitlement to social benefits and protection.”