Workers to Donald Dee: Is ECOP an organization of madmen?

“In today's business environment, there is no such thing as permanent employment.  If they push that, no madman would do business here.”

 

For expressing this view, a worker’s group has turned the table against Donald Dee, the head of Employers' Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP), who also has threatened to bring the government to court once it forces companies to make their employees regular or permanent.

 

“ECOP is in business and when Donald Dee said no madman would do business here without endo, it also goes to show that ECOP is, in essence, an organization of madmen.  If that is so, the more the need for the government to take the side of labor,” countered Partido Manggagawa (PM) Chair Renato Magtubo.

 

According to Magtubo:  “Endo or contractualization in its many form is an epidemic that must be purged to save the present and future generation of workers from sinking deeper into the gulf of terminal marginality.”

 

As to Dee’s threat to bring the government to court, Magtubo said: “ECOP should not make the courts its battlefield on endo.  It’s a policy issue.  You shouldn’t bother the court to resolve the issue on whether workers have the right to live a life of dignity over the right of capital to a fair return.”

 

Labor and business are at loggerheads over this issue as the government of President Duterte made it a pledge to end the pervasive practice of endo in the workplace.  The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is soon to come out with a new Order in place of the much criticized DO 18-A that regulates contracting and third party sub-contracting practices.  

 

PM likewise noted that pending bills in the House and in the Senate are more for regulation of allowable contracting rather than on prohibition.

 

Echoing the resounding and unanimous position of the October 17 Labor Summit, Partido Manggagawa under the Nagkaisa labor coalition, is for total prohibition of all forms of contractualization and fixed-term employment. 

 

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), however, is more inclined with the business proposal for a “win-win solution” which prescribes regularization done by third party service providers (manpower agencies and cooperatives) and not by principal companies -- a prescription vehemently opposed by labor.

 

PM is urging DOLE and Congress to principally consider the weight of the position taken by the Labor Summit. 

 

“A good policy may also mean an end of contract with madmen,” concludes Magtubo.

November 3, 2016