TUCP calls for wage subsidy in the wake of dismal GDP news

PHILIPPINE STAR/MICHAEL VARCAS

After Thursday’s announcement that the country experienced its worst economic decline since World War 2 last year, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) on Friday called on the government to provide a wage subsidy to workers.

In a statement released on Friday, TUCP President and Party-list Rep. Raymond C. Mendoza said, “We have long been urging the Government to get ahead of the recession and put into place wage subsidies for those who are struggling to stay afloat. A wage subsidy is urgently needed, as the economy has not bounced back as predicted by the economic managers.”

The Philippine Statistics Authority on Thursday said that the country has suffered its worst gross domestic product (GDP) contraction since the Second World War, with the Philippine economy contracting by 9.5% in 2020.

This was largely due to the ongoing widespread lockdowns which were first imposed in March last year. A very stringent community quarantine which restricted most economic activity except for essential services was imposed during the first few months of 2020 as a way of controlling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The country has had over half a million COVID-19 cases since the pandemic started last year.

Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said on Thursday that they are not expecting any wage hikes this year as most establishments have been badly affected by the pandemic, making them unlikely to be capable of paying a higher minimum wage to workers. — Gillian M. Cortez

Workers call for price freeze

File photo / Manila Bulletin

The country's largest workers' group the Associated Labor Unions (ALU) has urged President Rodrigo Duterte to order a price freeze on basic commodities and go after profiteers due to increases in the prices of food and other staples.

ALU National Executive Vice President Gerard Seno said aside from extending price freeze and hunt down hoarders and price manipulators, the government should deploy more Diskwento Caravan and Kadiwa rolling stores to bring affordable basic food commodities to communities and work sites.

The workers group also sent a letter to the President seeking an immediate action by concerned government agencies to put in place effective price controls on basic commodities and to provide a wage subsidy for workers for their nutritional needs. 

“The prices of basic commodities increased as unscrupulous traders and middlemen and socially irresponsible retailers take advantage of the situation,” he said.

He said millions of workers were left with no recourse but to rely on noodles, 3-in-1 coffee and other substitutes just to fill their stomachs.

“Millions of workers, since March 2020, were either on "No Work, No Pay" hold-over arrangements, or compelled to undertake job-sharing or job-rotation agreements, or to be placed on no compensation furlough as employers extended the suspension of their business operations. Millions, in the worse case, were laid off. Truly, worker incomes took a severe battering, and what little savings they had, is long gone,” Seno said.

He said the P537 daily wage can hardly purchase a kilo of pork, including vegetables to meet the nutrition needs of a family of five.

The workers group appealed to Duterte to extend proclamation 1081 issued in the wake of Typhoon Ulysses indefinitely to freeze prizes of basic commodities, for the government to go after and to prosecute price gouging middlemen, traders and retailers and to shut down hoarders. 

Meanwhile, Senator Christopher Go urged the government Monday to immediately act on the rising prices of pork and other food commodities and boost the country’s food security amid the current pandemic. 

Go has been prodding the government to prioritize three important aspects towards COVID-19 recovery: (1) address hunger; (2) acquire sufficient, safe and effective vaccines for all Filipinos with utmost priority to the poor and vulnerable sectors as well as frontliners; (3) and provide more economic opportunities through jobs and other forms of livelihood. . 

To address the concern amid widely reported increase in prices of several meat products, Go has renewed his appeal for the Executive Department to issue an Executive Order to impose a ceiling on the prices of pork and chicken in the market.

The Department of Agriculture is one with Go in recommending price ceilings to prevent further price hikes in the country. 

It seeks to prevent opportunistic businesses from illegally manipulating the prices of basic necessities and prime commodities, thus helping the Filipino consumers who are still affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition, the DA also suggested utilizing its annual Buffer Fund under Republic Act 7581 to subsidize distribution costs of pork and chicken, effectively ensuring reasonable prices in the market.

Under RA 7581, the DA may use its Buffer Fund to purchase, import, or stockpile any basic necessity or prime commodity, devise ways and means of distributing them for sale at reasonable prices in areas where there is shortage of supply or a need to effect changes in its prevailing price.

Furthermore, the DA has proposed the tripling of the Minimum Access Volume on pork imports, augmenting local pork supply and, thus, keeping prices more stable. 

For a more long-term approach to food security in the country, the DA has also recently launched "ONE DA: A Holistic Approach to Agriculture and Fisheries Transformation" which serves as “an integrated framework with 12 key strategies to accelerate the transformation towards a modern and industrialized Philippine agriculture through an inclusive approach.”

To address the issue of price increase induced by animal-borne diseases, such as African Swine Fever, Duterte has issued Executive Order 105 which created the National Task Force on Animal-Borne Diseases. 

This seeks to undertake activities to prevent the entry of animal-borne diseases, control their spread and address other related issues.

Duterte also signed Executive Order 123 modifying the rates of import duty on certain agricultural products under section 1611 of Republic Act 10863, otherwise known as the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act. 

The said EO, in effect, retained the reduced five percent tariff rates imposed on mechanically deboned meat of chicken and turkey, a key ingredient of low-priced meat products often consumed by ordinary Filipinos.

“This is most welcome and I support it. This will have a huge impact on keeping prices low by keeping the tariffs low and preventing any inflationary effect,” Go said previously. 

A survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations in November 2020 revealed that an estimated four million families reported involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months prior to the study. The number, though, is lower than the previous data gathered by SWS in September of last year where some 7.6 million reported involuntary hunger due to the pandemic. - Vito Barcelo and Macon Ramos-Araneta

PSA report on easing of unemployment ‘illusory’; gov’t must work harder at creating jobs — Nagkaisa Labor Coalition, ALU

Labor groups described the results of the latest Labor Force Survey of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showing the easing of unemployment rate as “illusory.”

“Yes, unemployment rate fell between July and October 2020. But the 8.7 percent unemployment rate reported for the last quarter of 2020 is an illusion,” Nagkaisa Labor Coalition chairperson Atty. Sonny Matula said in a statement on Thursday.

“Employment remains low. Compared to the same quarter last year, the number of employed workers is lower by 2.7 million. The current employment level is also less than the number of employed workers in July by almost 1.5 million. That does not resemble recovery at all,” he added.

Except for self-employment and employers in family-owned business or farms, Matula said, the number of workers across classes remains lower than last year and even in July.

He added that wage and salary workers is short by 2.6 million compared to last year. 

Matula said the economy remains weak, there is not enough demand in the market and firms have not recovered at all. 

“If October and July labor indicators were any indication of the performance of the government’s current approach to the pandemic and the crisis, then it is as if economic managers were not working at all,” he said.

If there is anything the economic managers should learn from the survey, Matula said, it is this “the jobs crisis is real and it is staring at them in the face.”

Alan Tanjusay, spokesperson Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, called on the government to address the unemployment by generating jobs.

“Job generation has to come from the national and local government building infrastructure programs. The government must take the lead in providing more jobs through aggressive infrastructures spending which employs Filipinos,” he said.

Underemployment, Tanjusay said, must also be addressed by providing financial grant incentives and affordable loans to troubled businesses and financially distressed business-owners to help them cope through the pandemic health and economic crisis and adjust to the new normal. 

He said the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Agriculture should also do their part in addressing exorbitant and unlawful increases in prices of basic food commodities by going after hoarders and profiteers nationwide and make prices of food affordable. 

The Department of Labor and Employment, Tanjusay said, should help curb the rising underemployment by fully resuming the conduct of labor inspections nationwide to ensure that lawful wages, social protection benefits and quality, and provision of regular jobs are enforced. - by Leslie Ann Aquino

Solons, labor group: Security of Tenure Act in Bicam may not spell end of endo

Lawmakers and a labor group on Wednesday said the passage of the proposed Security of Tenure Act does not meet a presidential promise to end contractualization in the private sector.

Minority Leader Joseph Stephen Paduano, as one of the principal authors of House Bill 6908 during the 17th Congress, said the new bill departs from the original intent of the old bill which was to eliminate “endo.”

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives endorsed for Senate approval House Bill 7036, or the proposed Security of Tenure Act, which seeks to strengthen the rights of workers in the private sector.

“The current bill, to my mind, will not address the problem on labor-only contracting. HB 6908 outlaws contractualization, while HB 7036 legalizes job contracting. This will complicate the issue due to the very thin line that separates labor contracting from job contracting,” said Paduano.

“While manifesting my strong opposition to the bill, let me clarify that on the issue of sub-contracting, it is my position not to totally ban the same. It promotes creation of jobs as well as supports the business of MSMEs [micro small and medium enterprises] for as long as the employees or the sub-contractors have security of tenure,” Paduano added.

According to the minority leader, the bill pales in comparison to the provisions of the Labor Code of the Philippines that clearly stipulate the prohibition of abusive workers’ contracts.

For her part, Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas, who voted against the bill, said House Bill 7036, or the current form of the Security of Tenure bill, actually makes contractualization a rule rather than an exception.

Brosas said this measure modifies the definition of regular employees in the Labor Code by deleting the parameter “usually necessary or desirable” and replacing it with a very steep precondition that the jobs being performed are “directly related and necessary.”

“This simple change in parameters actually has far-reaching consequences and dooms the hopes of millions of contractual workers for regularization,” said Brosas.

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), for its part, said it cannot support or endorse House Bill 7036, saying the Congress missed a historic chance to correct the decades-long injustice to workers under endo.

“As currently worded, it legitimizes the highly exploitative end-of-contract or endo work arrangements by perpetuating the falsehood that it is the lack of capital and control, and not the business of labor supply, that constitutes labor-only contracting, which has long been a prohibited practice,” the TUCP said in a statement.

TUCP said it has serious concerns over the bill as workers have long fought for an end to contractualization, even after an initial Presidential veto in 2019, only to be presented now with a further watered-down version which will further betray their hopes.

“Let it be said at the outset, that the bill is not just a deeply flawed bill, it is fatally flawed and squandered the historic opportunity to correct the decades-long injustice to workers under endo,” it added.

It said the essence of the fraud blurring the employer-employee relationship for millions of contractual workers remains unaddressed.

“Our position in labor remains firm:  Regardless of whether or not the contractor has capital or investments in the form of office or equipment, if all that the contractor does is to recruit and deploy workers, that is labor-only contracting, and is therefore illegal,” it added.

The group said the bill specifically legitimizes the setting up of manpower cooperative as a contractor, and as a consequence will allow the perpetuation of contractualization and exploitation.

While the bill prohibits short-term contracts, the TUCP said it specifically added probationary employment as an allowable fixed-term or short-term contract.

“It is therefore conceivable, that contractors will use this device to move away from 5-5-5, or 5 month short-term contracts to defeat the regularization of workers, towards 6-6-6, or the sequential use of 6-month probationary contracts to legitimize the practice of never-ending probationary status of the worker,” it added.

TUCP appealed to the congressional bicameral conference committee to correct those flaws, which will further loosen and expand upon the loopholes and may lead to the proliferation and exploitation of millions of contractual workers.

The House Bill 7036 seeks to amend Presidential Decree 442 as amended, or the Labor Code of the Philippines.

Once passed into law, HB 7036 would prohibit “labor-only” contracting except: when the contractor or any intermediary does not have substantial capital or investment in the form of tools, equipment, machineries, and work premises, among others; has no control over the workers’ method and means of accomplishing their work and; the workers recruited and placed are performing activities which are directly related and necessary to the principal business of such employer.

The measure also introduces a new provision requiring all persons or entities doing business as job contractors to obtain a license from the Department of Labor and Employment, including compliance with the listing requirements for such licensing, determining the period of validity of the license, and stating the responsibility of the licensee to submit an annual report.

It also declares that violation of substantive or procedural due process is equivalent to illegal dismissal. In addition, the entitlements of an illegally dismissed employee are broadened by including the payment of social welfare contributions and benefits to said employee.

The bill amplifies and clarifies the classification of employees by: mandating regular employment as the general rule; and prohibiting fixed-term employment except in cases of overseas Filipino workers, workers on probation, relievers who are temporary replacements of absent regular employees whose engagements shall not exceed six months, project employees, and seasonal employees.

The bill also provides that the rights and benefits of relievers, project, and seasonal employees are at par with regular employees consistent with the principle that all workers must be treated alike both as to rights enjoyed and obligations assumed.

The measure provides administrative penalties of a fine and possible closure of business for those engaging in prohibited end-of-contract arrangements, and labor-only contracting.

At present, there is no imposable penalty for engaging in labor-only contracting except the simple declaration of ostensible employees of the contractor as employees of the principal employer. - By Jovee Marie de la Cruz