Ecop-DOLE labor regularization deal hangs
THE revival of the Department of Labor and Employment’s (DOLE) proposed pact with the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (Ecop) for the regularization of over 200,000 contractual workers is stuck in limbo for now.
The labor sector said it will not participate in the negotiations for the DOLE-Ecop Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) until the Senate decides on the outcome of the Security of Tenure (SOT) bill.
In a phone interview, Federation of Free Workers (FFW) Vice
President Julius Cainglet said that this was the decision of the members of labor coalition Nagkaisa during their talk with Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III last month.
“We told him we won’t be entertaining any agreement at this point until the SOT bill is passed [into law],” Cainglet said.
New version
DUE to the vocal opposition of the labor groups on the said accord, the DOLE announced last week the MOU will no longer push through, at least in its current state.
It may, Bello noted, be revived under a tripartite arrangement, this time with the participation of workers in crafting its provisions.
“I advised the management group of Ecop to first study [the MOU] and then come up with a different approach and probably this time make it a tripartite MOU,” Bello told reporters in an interview on Tuesday.
In a phone interview, Ecop President Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. confirmed to the BusinessMirror they are indeed engaged in talks with some labor leaders.
“We are informally talking about it so we could clarify them about the contents [of the MOU],”
“I advised the management group of Ecop to first study [the MOU] and then come up with a different approach and probably this time make it a tripartite MOU.”— Bello
Ortiz-Luis said.
Tripartite talks
CURRENTLy, he said they are still waiting for feedback from the labor group.
“If they are interested in initiating it and we find nothing objectionable, then we will talk. If we think it [their position] is not okay, then we will not talk,” Ortiz-Luis said.
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) also rejected negotiations with Ecop on the regularization of illegally contracted workers for now, since they claim it is a “circumvention of our labor laws and regulations, and direct assault [on] the rights of workers.”
“The DOLE should just file cases against employers and business owners, who are members of Ecop which will be found practicing illegal job contracting or endo, and apply the full force of the law as soon as possible,” TUCP President Raymond Mendoza said in a statement.
The head of the country’s largest labor group called on Ecop to police its ranks and “encourage its members to follow the law.”
Unresolved opposition MEMBERS of the Nagkaisa, which include FFW and TUCP, have opposed the DOLE-Ecop Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), saying it aims to derail the passage of the SOT bill into law.
Once in effect, the SOT bill will impose additional restrictions for companies engaged in contractualization. Other provisions of the junked three-year deal being opposed by labor groups is its moratorium on the labor inspection for firms, which will absorb its contractual workers and noninclusion of workers in its crafting.
They also criticized the exclusion from the MOU of Ecop members with no existing enforceable regularization orders from the DOLE.
“They only want to cover workers with compliance orders. It has no value-added,” Cainglet said.
Bello belied the allegation of the labor sector and said the MOU actually aims to encourage senators to pass the SOT bill by showing that employers are willing to voluntarily regularize their contractual workers.
As for the labor inspection moratorium, he said it will immediately be revoked if they get a complaint from workers of an MOU-covered company.