Labor groups reject draft DO anew

It’s strike two for the labor department as labor groups unanimously rejected for the second time the new draft rules on endo prepared by senior DOLE officials.

“The draft is worse than the existing DO 18-A,” declared Nagkaisa labor coalition in a letter/comment submitted before the office of Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III Thursday. Labor groups received the working draft by email from DOLE last week.

A picket was also held by members of Nagkaisa against the draft rules which they claimed to be worse than the existing regulations as it subjects almost all jobs and functions to contractual employment and loosen up requirements for registration of labor contractors/agencies.

Nagkaisa is fighting for total prohibition of all forms of contractualization that leads to the creation and proliferation of short and fixed-term jobs; establishes trilateral (middleman) employment relations; and the undermining of workers’ rights to security of tenure, freedom of association, and collectively bargain with principal employers.

“Sa bagong DO ay employers at agencies lang ang panalo,” lamented Nagkaisa spokesman Renato Magtubo during the picket rally, as the registration of service providers and manpower agencies and cooperatives and the contracting out/outsourcing of almost all kinds of job is made more easy under the new draft.  

Nagkaisa pointed out that Section 10 of said draft made it impossible to determine if a job is directly related or not to the principal’s main business. As such, there is always the presumption that all jobs can be contracted out. Employers have directly expressed in many forums that they want to continue contracting out any and all jobs as they see fit.

“The draft DO progressively strips workers of all legal protection through issues, presumptions and indicators that must be endlessly litigated through an expensive legal system structured to defeat and obstruct labor justice,” claimed Nagkaisa in its comment.

The group said the draft DO is neither in accordance nor in compliance with labor demand and the Presidential directive to “end contractualization or stop endo” as it was obviously drawn from the employer’ perspective.  

“The draft DO is telling workers to make further and greater sacrifice so that the rights of employers and the likes of PALSCON and Asiapro to do sub-contracting and outsourcing business are protected,” added Magtubo. 

Nagkaisa reiterates its position that new rules on endo must be framed on the regime of prohibition and the institutionalization of bilateral or “direct hiring” employment relationship. 

Magtubo said prohibition need not be limited to labor-only contracting as compliance to capital requirements, as in the case of PALSCON and Asiapro, should not justify the contracting out of labor to them when the principal employer retains the right to control the means and manner by which the work is done.

Nagkaisa

26 January 2017

PM asks DOLE to inspect biggest workers cooperative

In response to the Department of Labor and Employment’s declaration that more than 5,000 contractors are to be assessed this year, the labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) asked that Asiapro, the country’s biggest workers cooperative, be first in line for inspection. Asiapro Multi-Purpose Cooperative, according to its website, deploys between 33,000 to 35,000 workers in more than 200 clients, among them multinational agribusiness firms Dole and Del Monte in Mindanao.

“Just by the sheer scale of Asiapro’s operations, the assessment and inspection should start with it. Moreover, Asiapro’s ‘worker coop’ model has been an object of controversy, to put it mildly, and has been the subject of legal cases and labor disputes. We urge the DOLE to seriously investigate if Asiapro is compliant with existing laws and regulations, specifically the prohibited practice of labor-only contracting,” stated Rene Magtubo, PM national chair.

He added that “It boggles the mind that one cooperative can have the expertise and the tools to engage in a full spectrum of businesses from agribusiness to real estate to manufacturing to merchandising and retail, and even mining. Only in the Philippines!”

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello was quoted as saying that the DOLE’s initial target was 5,150 registered subcontractors and their 26,194 principals. “Of the 416,343 workers deployed by contractors according to the DOLE, Asiapro alone accounts for almost 10%. Asiapro is as big as a contractor can get,” Magtubo exclaimed.

He elaborated that in Asiapro’s operation in the hauling company Galeo which in turn is a contractor in the Carmen Copper mine in Toledo City was instructive of how the ‘workers coop’ works. “In 2014, workers at Galeo tried to form a union but were stopped by a TRO since Asiapro claimed that the employees were their members. Later, Galeo dropped Asiapro as subcontractor and engaged another ‘worker coop,’ but it was still these same workers who were driving and manning Galeo’s trucks, despite the changes in their alleged employers,” Magtubo insisted.

As a coop, Asiapro only has 473 regular members who have full rights, including right to vote and be voted but 98% of its members are associate members with no similar rights. It is the latter who are deployed as workers in Asiapro’c clients. Asiapro does not pay wages to the workers it deploys but a gross share in the profit of the service contract entered with the client. Still the gross share is always equal to the minimum daily wage in the region multiplied by the number of days worked.

“The Supreme Court has once declared that Asiapro’s associates are actually its workers by virtue of the four-fold test, that is, Asiapro has the power to hire, fire, pay wages and control the means and method of the work,” Magtubo reminded.

August 8, 2016

“Jail Kentex, subcon owners!”—labor group

Press Release

May 18, 2015

The militant Partido Manggagawa (PM) is calling for the criminal prosecution of the owners of Kentex Manufacturing and its subcontractor CJC Manpower Services. To highlight this call, some 50 PM members will troop this morning to the main office of the Department of Labor and Employment as Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz summons the representatives of Kentex and CJC for a mandatory conference.

“Workers who are caught jaywalking can be jailed. The owners of Kentex and CJC deserve no less a penalty for the massacre of some 70 workers and injuries to dozens more. The owners of Kentex and CJC are not just immoral but criminal. Justice for Kentex workers cannot be served by giving P13,000 in assistance to the families,” declared Wilson Fortaleza, PM spokesperson.

In the rally today, PM members will carry placards with messages like “Kentex, CJC: Kriminal di lang immoral,” “Contractualization kills” and “Labor rights violations kill too.”

PM vows to continue pressing for justice for Kentex workers who were killed and injured in the factory fire last week. Earlier, PM together with the Nagkaisa labor coalition held a candle lighting protest at the Kentex factory. More actions are slated for the coming days.

As Secretary Baldoz called on Congress to put “teeth to the law” by passing pending legislative bills providing for criminal penalties for violations of occupational safety and health standards, PM challenged the DOLE to use its existing visitorial and enforcement powers to inspect establishments to prevent another workplace tragedy.

“Obviously we welcome criminalization of the breach of workplace safety. Still what the DOLE lacks is political will not enforcement powers Article 128 of the Labor Code already empowers the Labor Secretary or her representative to investigate any fact, condition or matter which may be necessary to determine violations or may aid in the enforcement of labor laws,” Fortaleza insisted.

He added that “In the very same industrial compound where Kentex is situated are other factories that we believe are similar sweatshops and possible firetraps. Secretary Baldoz and the DOLE’s labor law compliance officers should waste no time inspecting these Kentex-like sweatshops and firetraps.”

“Kentex and its illegal subcontractor CJC are both small fry. As far as illegal and immoral forms of contractualization is concerned there are bigger fish out there. We have been campaigning already against Asiapro, the biggest supplier of contractual workers in the guise of a labor cooperative. And everyone knows the endo system at SM. But the DOLE has not lifted a finger in these cases,” Fortaleza ended.

Protesters going back to Asiapro Cooperative

MEDIA ADVISORY

NAGKAISA!

28 April 2015

REQUEST FOR COVERAGE

Protesters going back to Asiapro Cooperative

Members of Nagkaisa! labor coalition is going back to Asiapro Cooperative as part of the workers’ continuing protest against labor contractualization.

  

APRIL 29, 2015

10:00 AM, Asiapro Bldg. San Rafael St.

Bgy. Kapitolyo, Pasig City

Asiapro is the biggest manpower cooperative in the country that supplies thousands of contractual workers to several companies nationwide.

In retaliation to the protest action last year, Asiapro filed libel cases against some of the leaders of Nagkaisa.

War vs. "King of labor-only contracting" in today's World Day of Decent Work

Press Release

NAGKAISA!

October 07, 2014

 

AROUND 200 members of labor coalition Nagkaisa picketed the Asiapro main office in Barangay Kapitolyo in Pasig City this morning to condemn the pseudo-manning agency for its gross violations of workers’ rights to mark the World Day of Decent Work observed worldwide today.

 

Below is the Nagkaisa labor coalition statement issued today:

 

“We, the Nagkaisa! (United!), join arms in condemning in highest and strongest terms the illegal practice being perpetrated by the Asiapro Multi-purpose Cooperative against thousands of vulnerable Filipino workers in its employ as we commemorate today the World Day of Decent Work along with other labor unions and progressive labor groups around the world.

 

We are enraged by Asiapro’s unfettered and multiple grave violations of international conventions on decent jobs and serious abuse of Philippine labor statutes that upholds the rights and interests of Filipino workers.

 

Behind its mask and by its pretense as a multi-purpose cooperative, Asiapro is a grand structure of deceit and an organized syndicate with a multi-billion peso profiteering from the blood and sweat of hapless Filipino workers.

 

The people running Asiapro are with pedigree, deeply-experienced and widely networked to camouflage and further entrench their labor-only-contracting fleecing operation. They are not just modern day labor slavery drivers, they are also rapacious and brutal not only for not giving the right wages and benefits for is workers but for skirting the laws and statutes by not paying millions of pesos of taxes that a responsible manning agency does to government.

 

As we join fellow workers in fighting for decent work, the Nagkaisa labor coalition today vows to make life difficult for Asiapro and promises to make its greedy high people running the organization be brought to justice.

 

In observance of the World Day of Decent Work, Nagkaisa today swears to uncover the Asiapro masterminds and make sure they will be made to account including all of the conspirators of the syndicate to pay for their abuse and injustice they have committed against thousands of its workers and their families.”

Advisory: Picket at biggest illegal “labor-only contractor”

Media Advisory

06 October 2014

Contact: Edsil Bacalso

09155386308              

REQUEST FOR COVERAGE

 In observance of “Global Day for Decent Work”

Picket at biggest illegal “labor-only contractor”

Tomorrow, 7 October 2014

10:00 AM

Assembly @ Kapitolyo gate, Pasig City

Then march to nearby Asiapro Building

The Nagkaisa labor coalition will hold a picket at Asiapro to demand a stop to the illegal operations of Asiapro which in the guise of a “workers cooperative” of some 34,000 members is in reality a labor-only contractor. A coordinated picket of Asiapro’s satellite office in downtown Cebu City will also be held tomorrow by Nagkaisa’s member groups. A labor dispute at the giant Carmen Copper mine in Toledo City, Cebu involving Asiapro remains pending to this day. The action tomorrow follows on the heels of an earlier picket that led to Asiapro’s filing of libel and public scandal cases against leaders of Nagkaisa. 

Labor groups slams TRO on union elections in Toledo mine

Photo from Cebu Daily News

Press Release

March 13, 2014

Association of Genuine Labor Organizations (AGLO)

Partido ng Manggagawa (PM)

The Association of Genuine Labor Organizations (AGLO) and Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) today slammed the temporary restraining order (TRO) slapped on the conduct of a union certification election at Galeo Equipment and Mining Company, a contractor at the Carmen Copper mine in Toledo City. At the height of the casting of votes by workers whether to join a union or not, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) halted the elections pursuant to a TRO imposed by the Court of Appeals.

Edmund Canete, the president of Galeo Workers Union (GWU-AGLO) asserted that “The TRO was a last minute maneuver by union-busting and union-evading capitalists to subvert our freedom to choose a union and improve our working conditions.”

A total of 285 Galeo workers had already voted by the time balloting was stopped around 5:35 pm yesterday. Galeo is a contractor within the huge Carmen Copper site that hauls mine waste from the open pit mining site. Another 275 Galeo workers were unable to cast ballots and were disenfranchised due to the TRO.

The election dispute arose from an attempt by the Asiapro manpower cooperative to prevent the unionization efforts at Galeo. Asiapro is claiming that the Galeo workers are their members and thus exempt from unionization. The DOLE however had ruled that there union elections can continue despite Asiapro’s opposition.

“Asiapro is the biggest supplier of contractual employees to many companies thus evading employer obligations to workers. In this case, Asiapro is serving as an instrument to sidestep workers’ right to self-organization and collective bargaining,” Canete claimed.

Toledo

Butch Pena, the national vice president AGLO condemned the TRO. “This TRO is a horrifying act by the second highest court of the land in curtailing workers constitutional right and freedom of association by declaring that Asiapro is an intervenor to the certification election case at Galeo.”

Renato Magtubo, PM national chairperson, argued that “Galeo and Asiapro’s connivance in evading unionism and use of legal maneuvers is not an unusual thing. This happens all the time. No wonder there are so few unions organized. Workers are not averse to unionism but capitalists do everything in their power to sabotage the freedom to organize.”

“We call on organized labor to unite in a campaign to defend the right to organize and job security. Asiapro must be exposed as a capitalist tool to defraud workers of their rights and benefits. Ang laban ng Galeo union ay laban ng lahat,” Magtubo insisted.