10,532 Workers Regularized So Far Under Duterte Admin, Says DOLE

By TFT TFT 

MANILA – About 10,532 workers have been regularized by 195 employers so far during the first 100 days of the Duterte administration, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) announced on Tuesday, October 4.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said on Tuesday “This means that we are on track in our objective to reduce illegitimate contractualization practices and ‘endo’ by 50% by the end of 2016, and abolishing it by 2017.”

“Endo” is the colloquial term for “end of contract” – the process by which companies hire employees for less than 6 months to avoid being covered by the labor code requirement to regularize employment after that period.

Bello said on Tuesday that he considers the regularization of these employees as among his department’s biggest accomplishments yet.

7-Eleven has already regularized some 800 workers, while SM has so far regularized around 4,796 workers – 1,156 of them are probationary, while 3,640 are seasonal workers, according to Bello.

“Although sumusunod sila unti-unti sa regularization, we were able to discover some violations of labor standards,” Bello explained.

Below is the breakdown of the number of workers who were regularized under both tracks:

• 5,733 regularized in bilateral arrangements
• 2,268 regularized in trilateral arrangement
• 2,531 regularized after assessments/reassessments of establishments and principals in priority industries

DOLE said as of 2014, there were almost 622,000 agency-hired contractual workers in the country.

Labor Undersecretary Dominador Say said the Duterte administration’s crackdown on “endo” is for the benefit of employees.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean anti-establishment, but the President is for the Constitution,” he added, reiterating that being pro-law is the duty of any elected official.

(Source: FilipinoTimes.ae)