SENATE President Vicente Sotto III strongly protested the call of presidential spokesperson Harry Roque nagging the 18th Congress to rush passage of a security of tenure bill when it convenes for its last regular session on July 26.
The bills are more popularly known as “anti-Endo law,” referring to the end-of-contract practice whereby employers skirt the legal requirement to regularize workers after a fixed probationary period.
The Senate leader lamented there was no need for the Palace official’s hysterics seen to be playing to the gallery, as lawmakers are on track to pass the awaited legislation for President Duterte to finally sign into law soon.
But first, he reminded Roque that his boss, President Duterte, was the one who vetoed the law passed by Congress in 2019.
New bills have been re-filed since.
Proponents of the remedial legislation, as well as the labor sector, are hoping President Duterte would not veto the new Endo bill as he did the first time in 2019.
Duterte claimed at that time he thrashed the anti-Endo bill because Congress widened the scope and definition of “labor contracting.”
Roque weighed in last week on the need for Congress to ensure passage of the new, re-filed anti-Endo bill, but gave the wrong Senate bill number. SB 1826 is not about Endo, but the creation of a third congressional district in Rizal Province, Sotto noted.
Earlier, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said that the DOLE will write Duterte soon to ask him to certify as urgent the re-filed Endo bills, so that this could be included among the legislative legacies of the Duterte administration.
Image credits: Simeon Celi Jr./Malacañang Presidential Photographers Division via AP