It has been two years when the campaign promise to end endo was made by President Duterte and workers have yet to see what this actual measure would be after all the country’s labor groups rejected the new rules (DO No. 174) issued by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in March of last year.
“It should be in the form of an Executive Order (EO) or a new law that redefines existing rules that allow contractualization or a trilateral employment relation between labor and capital. Without it, employers and their middlemen labor contractors shall continue with their business of gaining profit from others’ labor,” declared Partido Manggagawa Chairman Renato Magtubo.
PM, together with many other labor groups converged and marched to Malacanang this morning in protest over the repeated failure of the Duterte administration to fulfill its pledge to finally stop the plague of contractualization.
“Nangako, umasa, nabokya.” This is how PM describes the two-year hiatus with the President’s failure to sign an EO that he promised during several dialogues with labor groups since Labor Day of last year.
Today, March 15, was the latest extension requested by the President yet no EO has been signed. And prior to this deadline, the President made a policy statement where he asked for a compromise as he cannot force the capitalists to comply with the workers' demand. Also lately, the secretary of the Department of Trade Industry (DTI) made a pronouncement that contractualization is not unfair to workers.
“Kaya naghihitsurang kalbaryo and dapat sana’y maluwalhating ending ng laban na ito. Kung walang EO o bagong batas para dito, mas malawakang pag-abswelto ito sa mga endolords,” lamented Magtubo.
Organized labor has been pushing for its version of an EO that prohibits contractualization by making direct-hiring as the mode. The assailed DO 174 still allows agency-hiring or third party sub-contracting as long as they comply with capitalization requirements and do not engage in labor-only-contracting.
Magtubo also deplored the blackmail being propagated by business groups that the labor-version EO would lead to massive job loss.
“The availability of jobs does not depend on the ability of manpower agencies. There will be work as long as the job exists. What will be lost are the feudal form of ‘middleman’ industry being enjoyed by manning agencies and labor cooperatives. And that, for our millions of workers, is justice,” concluded Magtubo. ###
Photos of the march today can be accessed at https://www.facebook.com/pa
15 March 2018
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