TUCP urges for massive job generation in the President's legacy projects to ease the COVID-19 triggered unemployment and poverty

On the President's 5th SONA

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) urges for massive job generation to be included in the President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday, July 27, 2020, to ease the COVID-19 triggered unemployment and poverty citing the President’s legacy projects, particularly in the P35.91 billion 102-km Mindanao Railway Project (MRP), Tagum-Davao-Digos segment as having great potential for employment and development.

“The Mindanao Railway Project of the President, although a single-track diesel-run railway, has great potential to generate the much-needed jobs. It will benefit not just the workers in Tagum-Davao-Digos areas but from as far as BARMM, Regions X, XII and CARAGA if agri-industrial hubs will be developed and connected to the planned eight (8) stations which are in Tagum; Carmen; Panabo; Mundiang; Davao Terminal; Toril; Sta Cruz; and Digos,” TUCP Partylist and TUCP President Raymond Democrito C. Mendoza pointed out.

The Department of Transportation (DOTr) had earlier reported that the MRP’s Tagum-Davao-Digos segment’s design and construction will start in third quarter of this year and are expected to be completed by end of 2021.

“We do not need to reinvent the wheel or embark on new grand plans to create jobs, we just have to ensure that the ‘Build, Build, Build’ and the legacy projects of the President would be for the development and industrialization in the countryside to spur employment, and not just mere rail tracks, widened and asphalted roads,” Mendoza explained. “The President’s SONA should direct the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Science and Technology (DOST), DOLE, DOTr and Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to ensure job creation,” he suggested.

The TUCP earlier projected 5 million to 10 million unemployed workers due to the pandemic, and 3 to 4 million in floating status under a “no work, no pay” arrangement, while the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported a 17.7 percent unemployment rate which accounts for 7.3 million unemployed in the workforce in the second quarter of 2020, nearly a four-time increase from the 5.1 percent unemployment rate in the same quarter of 2019.

The PSA also reported double-digit unemployment rates in all regions, the highest was in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) at 29.8 percent. The rest of the regions in Mindanao island: Region IX registered an unemployment rate of 23.9 percent, Region X at 11.1 percent, Region XI at 17.9 percent, Region XII at 21.2 percent and CARAGA at 12.3 percent.

The SWS survey conducted in May 2020 noted that eighty-three percent of Filipinos believe that their quality of life has worsened in the last 12 months. The survey has 294 respondents from Metro Manila, 1,645 from Balance Luzon, 792 from Visayas, and 1,279 from Mindanao. While a separate SWS survey in the same period showed that 16.7 percent or an estimated 4.2 million Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger at least once for the past three months.

"We reiterate our call to the Government on the urgency to respond to the magnitude of the displacement of workers. Indeed, some companies are operating but it will get worse before it will get better. Companies are operating in half capacities to finish the pre-pandemic job orders and there are no new orders coming in as the economies of our markets abroad are in recession. Closures will come in the fourth quarter of the year with no assurance of rebound in 2021. There is no assurance of foreign remittance as our OFWs are coming home and those who stayed overseas have no jobs while our seafarers have become quarantine costly and unable to board the ships on time due to bottlenecks in the green lanes. It should not be ‘business-as-usual’ mode, we need to have a massive job creation program or a Philippine Agri-Industrial Development Program to stimulate the economy, and not rely on labor export or foreign investments,” TUCP Vice President Luis Corral said.

He also pointed out that this is President Duterte’s golden opportunity to “BUILD BACK BETTER” using the country’s “AAA-minus credit rating” to fund a multi-trillion-peso economic stimulus package so that the credit rating is felt by the Filipino people.

- TUCP Labor Center

Labor group expects “good” SONA

Nagkaisa Labor Coalition, the largest coalition of worker’s organization in the country expects a “good” SONA from President Duterte.

“It should be a SONA that would squarely address economic woes and political issues besetting the country today”, said Nagkaisa spokesperson Ka Rene Magtubo.

Nagkaisa expects the President’s SONA should contain the following:

– Addressing the proliferation of illegal and abusive contracting arrangements that DO 174 and EO 51 failed to do, by way of certifying as urgent the Security of Tenure Bill pending in the Senate

– Addressing the “gap” in workers wages and the cost of living brought about by the TRAIN law, rising inflation, peso devaluation, profiteering and the spike in global prices of petroleum products by way of certifying as urgent wage bills pending in the House of Representatives;

– Providing more assistance to women workers by enacting into law the Expanded Maternity Leave Bill pending in the House of Representatives;

– Addressing the prevalence of poverty despite positive economic growth in terms of programs and services that would directly benefit the poor people by way of increasing budget in affordable housing, universal healthcare and pension for the elderly among others;

– Addressing the continuing problem of unemployment and underemployment by way of policies and programs that would provide more local employment opportunities to the labor force by way of a clear industrialization policy, continuing land reform, and development of agriculture; and

– Clear government policy of defending the country’s sovereignty and patrimony on its rightful claims in the West Philippine Sea.

“These are the real issues that matter most to the working people that government should prioritize and not charter change. Absent these issues, the speech will be “business as usual” as in the previous SONAs”, Magtubo added.

Majority of the members of the coalition will be joining the United Peoples’ SONA to voice out workers issues and concerns.

– Nagkaisa Labor Coalition
Press Release

Workers ‘frustrated’ over failed promise on ‘endo’

THE country’s biggest labor groups were frustrated and felt neglected by President Rodrigo Duterte’s failure to lay down a clear-cut policy on work contracting and other forms of short-term employment during his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday.

The Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP), through spokesman Alan Tanjusay, on Tuesday said 25 to 30 million contractual workers were expecting that the President will fulfill his promise to end the contractualization scheme during his speech.

“We are very frustrated with Mr. Duterte as it turned out but we have no choice but to continue and [raise]the ante in pressing him to fulfill his promise to abolish endo (end of contract) and all forms of contractualization,” Tanjusay said in a text message to The Manila Times.

He added that only the fulfillment of the President’s campaign promise and subsequent meetings with leaders of various labor groups to put a stop to all forms of contractualization can free millions of workers from the “slavery” of contractualized work , jobs that have no security of tenure and paid with low wages and meager benefits.

“Mr. Duterte asked labor groups for time on the issue of contractualization on Labor Day. We hope that he would abolish it as he promised he would during his SONA,” Tanjusay said.

“We urge the President to make clear in no uncertain terms, in plain, categorical language, his placing the contractual problem as among our—and his—top priorities in the national order of battle. All surveys indicate that the Top 3 concerns nationally are the spiralling the cost of goods and services, the meager wages and the lack of decent employment. All are directly traceable to the regime of contractualization,” according to the ALU-TUCP spokesman.

The group noted that during their May 1 Labor Day dialogue with Duterte in Davao City, the President asked labor leaders to draft a presidential Executive Order (EO).

The draft EO was submitted by the ALU-TUCP and the Nagkakaisa Labor Coalition last May 9 in compliance with the President’s directive.

Covered by the EO are contracting and sub-contracting arrangements including cooperatives.

The order prohibited all forms of labor contracting, labor-only contracting or job contracting, which are declared illegal and are therefore strictly prohibited.

It stated, “All parties engaged in any arrangement in violation of this EO shall automatically be considered the worker’s direct employer and the latter shall be deemed as direct employees.”

The order said violations of the EO shall be penalized under existing laws and regulations.

If the offense is committed by cooperative, corporation, partnership, trust, firm, association or any juridical entity, the penalty shall be imposed upon the guilty officers of such groups.

The draft EO, if approved by the President, will effectively nullify Department Order (DO) 174 of the Department of Labor and Employment, the new guidelines on contractualization that took effect last April 3.

DO 174 replaced DO 18-A in response to the workers’s demand to abolish contractualization.

Labor groups rejected DO 174, claiming that it only benefits employers and manpower service providers and cooperatives.

During his meeting with organized labor in Davao City, the President assured them that he understood what the workers want and suggested that “we assert our public interest power to ensure a just transition to help him meet his promise to the nation.”

“I stand firm on my conviction to end endo. Just give us time. The Labor Code guarantees all the right to security of tenure. This has to be strictly enforced. Labor laws must be enforced against endo and labor-only contracting,” Duterte told the workers.

The President admitted in the labor dialogue that there is “resistance and objections” coming from some members of his Cabinet and interest lobby groups on his decision to ban contractualization “but the President said he has no sympathy for oligarchs.” - By WILLIAM DEPASUPIL, TMT

Workers fear ‘endo’ vow now on the back burner

Labor groups are seeing their hope for an end to contractualization—as what President Duterte committed on several occasions since the campaign period—dim by the day, especially with the Chief Executive opting to evade the labor issue in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Monday.

For Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III, however, the President has already fulfilled his promise of ending “illegal contractualization”.

“What is left now is the issue on contractualization, because what the workers wanted is that there is total prohibition,” he said. “But we told them that it is not possible because there is a law that allows employers to get contractual workers,” he added. For example, he said, if an employer wanted to get a security guard for his company, he could hire one from a manpower agency. Also, if a company wanted to get janitors, it could hire from an agency. “We cannot tell employers to stop it because we have a law on that,” he added.

But the Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) and Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) disagree, which is why they were disappointed when Duterte did not mention in his second Sona how he intends to put an end to the practice of fixed-term employment. Moreover, theKMU said it is becoming obvious the President will not be able to junk contractualization under his six-year term.

“I don’t find any concrete and substantial commitment with regard to labor issues and other important issues of the masses. The President’s Sona is not for the common people,” KMU Chairman Elmer C. Labog told the BusinessMirror.

ALU-TUCP Spokesman Alan A. Tanjusay said they are still hoping for the issuance an executive order (EO) banning contractualization as a mode of employment. “Of course, [we still expect him to end contractualization], not only because ALU-TUCP wanted it, but, most important, because he promised it,” Tanjusay told the BusinessMirror.

However, Tanjusay said as much as ALU-TUCP wanted to give the Chief Executive time to resolve the labor issue, it wonders how long should workers wait for labor reforms to be enacted.

“We are willing to give him the time he said he would need in delivering the promises he made to the Filipino people, but how long are we going to wait? Until when will the workers have to hope in him?” Tanjusay added.

Duterte, during the campaign, vowed to outlaw contractualization—particularly the hiring practice known as endo—a promise that earned him the support of several labor groups. However, a year after and two Sona later, Duterte has yet to comply with the appeal of the labor movement for an EO scrapping contractualization.

What labor groups got, instead, was a department order issued in March by Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III imposing tighter regulations on contractual arrangements. Labor groups and economists have since criticized Bello’s order, saying it was redundant with existing laws and it oversimplifies the labor market.

Striking while the iron is hot, labor groups demanded one after the other reforms under the Duterte administration, including a P184 across-the-board wage increase for Metro Manila-based workers, after getting the Chief Executive’s commitment to end contractualization.

Much to the labor groups’ dismay, however, Duterte made no mention of scrapping fixed-term employment and increasing wages in his second Sona. On top of this, Malacañang has yet to divulge any information on the status of the draft EO seeking to scrap contractualization submitted by ALU-TUCP on May 9.

But Bello insisted that there is no more endo (or end of contract), a term referring to the practice of employers to hire employees on repeated five-month contracts to go around the law requiring them to hire on a regular basis any employee who has worked for them for six months.

“Endo has stopped, because the President has already told employers and managers to stop,” Bello said, noting that “when the President said there would be no more contractualization, what he meant was that there would be no more illegal contractualization”.

He said they have corrected this practice in some big companies, such as in the country’s leading chain of supermalls, “where we asked the management to regularize their salesgirls, for instance, because the salesgirls are necessary workers in the malls”.

He said the SM Group has committed to comply, “but only gradually”, the same request made by leading food chains, citing the huge number of their workers.

Jollibee, for instance, has more than 50,000 workers “and has asked that they be allowed to gradually implement regularization”.

However, Bello admitted that there were still many shopping malls, department stores and food chains that continue to violate the law on contractualization.

So far, the labor department has monitored the regularization of 61,000 contractual workers in a span of one year, or since the President announced the end of the practice of endo. - By Elijah Felice Rosales With Manuel Cayon / Business Mirror


http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/workers-fear-endo-vow-now-on-the-back-burner/