Days before 17th Congress adjourns, labor groups have urged the House of Representatives to reconsider the revival of its proposal on Security of Tenure (SOT) bill and harmonize it with the Senate version at the bicameral conference committee level.
Various groups have strongly denounced the House of Representatives’ adoption of Senate Bill 1826 for the SOT bill, making it unnecessary for it to go through the bicameral conference.
The Federation of Free Workers (FFW) said it will not support the SOT bill without the House version, saying this is not the law that the trade unions and the workers envisioned for many years.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the manipulation in the House of Representatives adopting Senate Bill 1826 or Security of Tenure (SOT) bill without considering the progressive provisions of House Bill 6908 which trade unions have been advocating for in the House for 21 years now,” FFW President Jose Sonny G. Matula said in a statement. “Without going through a bicameral conference and without giving notice to the members of the House Labor Committee, the House Labor Committee chair killed with alacrity HB 6908 and substituted it with SB 1826.
While Matula admitted that they did welcome SB 1826 earlier, they said the proposed SOT bill in the Senate alone will not be that effective to address contractualization.
“We cannot put “flesh and blood” to security of tenure with the Senate version alone thereby killing the House version. Otherwise, we will just be putting “flesh” without “blood” to the malnourished constitutional right to security of tenure,” he said.
Matula lamented among those ignored include the strong provisions of the House version on prohibition of fixed term employment and the specific fine of 30,000 per head for violation of law.
“The regressive provision of the Senate on solidarity liability must be corrected. Limiting those who are solidarity liable to Book III only instead of all existing provisions of the Labor Code does not give justice to the principle that “those who have less in life must be given more in law.”
Clearly, some decision makers killed the process in the bicameral committee conference to prevent the harmonization of the law to answer the call of workers to security of tenure,” he added.
In a separate joint press statement, labor groups comprising the majority of Nagkaisa also condemned the passage of the non-harmonized version of the SOT bills.
“This is clearly a product of treachery by the leadership of both Houses, working in cahoots with employers, to hijack the process to undermine workers’ final push for a better law through the harmonization of HB6908 and SB1826 at the bicam level,” Nagkaisa said.
It also blamed the House leadership for bypassing the House panel tasked to harmonize the provisions on the SOT bills.
“With the House adopting SB 1826 en toto, our dream of having stronger anti-contractualization provisions in the Labor Code is dead!,” it said.
“An impending anti-endo legislation that does not meet these bottom line issues is not worthy of support. Absent the harmonization of this demand in the final version, our collective response is outright rejection,” it added.
Those behind the joint press statement were Alliance of General Unions, Institutions and Labor Associations (Aguila), Federation of Free Workers (FFW), Partido Manggagawa (PM), Philippine Airlines Empoyees Association (PALEA), Sentro ng Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Sentro).
Employers and labor groups are now keenly waiting to see if President Duterte will sign or veto the bill.
But the Employers Confederation of the Philippines said on Tuesday it is keen to support the more “realistic” Senate version of the SOT bill, citing that the SB 1826 still recognizes nonregular forms of employment including seasonal, project-based and casual workers in contrast to the House Bill (HB) 6908, which outlawed fixed-term employment.
Ecop also expressed opposition on the imposition of fine on companies engaged in illegal contractualization.