Member-companies of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines will voluntarily regularize over 220,000 contractual workers over the next three years.
ECOP acting president Sergio Ortiz-Luis confirmed they will soon be forging a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to finally end their strained relations on the issue of regularization.
He noted many of their members with pending regularization orders from DOLE would complain how it would slowdown if not stop their operations.
With the new National Voluntary Regularization Plan, Luis said their members could comply with the order at a convenient pace.
“This will benefit both employers and the workers. This is a win-win solution,” Luis told BusinessMirror in a SMS.
Act of betrayal
Labor coalition Nagkaisa, denounced the pact, which they said is a betrayal of the DOLE’s mission to enforce legislation against illegal forms of contractualization like labor-only contracting (LOC) and end-of-contract scheme (ENDO).
The group said the provisions of the MOU also accommodated employers who violated the law.
“Was it not DOLE which issues compliance orders on regularization but only to be defied by ECOP members? And now they are making a new pact?” Nagkaisa said in a statement. “What kind of pact on regularizing workers can DOLE and ECOP agree on, if it is done without workers, who are the supposed beneficiaries of this agreement?”
Nagkaisa chair and Federation of Free Workers (FFW) Sonny Matula also questioned the legality and the impact of the MOU to be signed by Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III since it might delay enforcement of regulations against illegal contractualization.
“By entering into a MOA with employers, he (Bello) might be liable for violation of RA (Republic Act) 3019. Sec 3,” Matula said.
RA 3019 states it is illegal for the government to enter into “any contract or transaction manifestly and grossly disadvantageous to the same, whether or not the public officer profited or will profit thereby.”
“The Secretary of Labor should be cautious in entering into a MOA with the employers’ group on 3-year agreement to regularized workers. The law can’t be suspended by a MOA,” Matula said.
First phase
In a press conference on Monday, Bello said they are set to sign the new MOU with ECOP on Friday covering, which cover 3,200 firms.
“As a start, between 30 to 40 percent of the workers of the pre-identified establishments will benefit from the plan,” Bello said.
He said the selected companies will have three years to “fully regularize” the remaining 70 to 60 percent of their contractual workers .
Labor Assistant Secretary Benjo M. Benavidez said the covered firms, which mostly belong to manufacturing, retail, and accommodation industries, were those which they have identified last year to be engaged or suspected to be engaged in illegal contractualization.
Bello hoped other employer groups and even individual companies will eventually follow suit.
This was confirmed by Ortiz, who said their other member have adopted a wait-in-see stance before deciding if they will also voluntarily join MOU.
“It will depend on the success of those who will the be first if they will be happy. If it is okay then the others [will follow],” Ortiz said.
Campaign boost
Benavidez said they expect the MOU will help in their anti-contractualization campaign by speeding up the regularization process.
He said this will prevent instances wherein their regularization order are questioned by the affected companies before the courts.
“Workers will be at the losing end in such cases. They will have to wait for several years before the finality of their case,” Benavidez said.
He cited the case of the order they issued for PLDT last year for the regularization of over 7,000 workers. The case, however, is still not enforced after PLDT questioned it before the Court of Appeals, where it is still pending.
“We don’t want another PLDT and similar cases,” Benavidez said.
DOLE is now reassessing if it will raise its target number of contractual workers it to be regularized with the commitment from ECOP.
To recall, DOLE said it is targeting to regularize another 300,000 contractual workers for 2019.
As of Dec. 2018, DOLE was able to regularize 413,940 contractual workers. Of this number, 291,612 were through voluntarily regularization, while the remaining 122,328 was through DOLE’s regular inspection.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes