AROUND 600,000 contractual workers are now expected to be regularized before the end of the year after the Employment Confederation of the Philippines (Ecop) gave its support to the government’s anti-illegal contrtactualization drive.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) doubled its target number of regularized workers for 2018 following Ecop’s commitment it will compel its members to absorb 300,000 of their contractual employees.
“This is a significant number which demonstrates the employers’ cooperation with the government,” Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said in a statement.
He said they are now drafting an agreement with Ecop to embody the details of that commitment.
The BusinessMirror tried contacting Ecop executives for their views on the planned agreement, but they have not responded as of press time.
Labor Undersecretary Joel B. Maglunsod welcomed the development since it will greatly help in their efforts to regularize more workers
He said he hopes Ecop will fulfill its pledge before the end of the year.
“They made this commitment with the understanding that the memorandum of agreement [contains] the details for its execution. If they will not be able to comply with it, they will be held liable [by the DOLE],” Maglunsod told
the BusinessMirror.
The DOLE attributed the increase of employers’ compliance with regularization laws to the strict enforcement of its anti-illegal contractualization drive.
In June the DOLE released its list of top 20 firms, which it inspected, with the most number of illegal labor-only contracting (LOC).
During that period, it also submitted to Malacañang the list of 3,377 companies, which are suspected or engaged in LOC.
Labor Assistant Secretary Benjo M. Benavidez said the release of the list “encouraged” more companies to voluntarily regularize their workers.
“We noticed a significant increase. Actually, in February alone, [in the] NCR [National Capital Region] there were already 51,000 workers who were voluntarily regularized,” Benavidez said.
With the said trend, the labor official said they are confident of achieving their goal of regularizing 300,000 contractual workers before the end of the year. As of August, the DOLE said it got business to regularize 213,000 employees for 2018.