Practice what you preach, Recto tells gov’t

Senate Minority Leader Ralph G. Recto yesterday urged the national government to practice what it preaches by regularizing the employment of thousands of casual government workers who are eligible for permanent civil service.

Recto issued the statement after President Duterte warned Monday companies to stop contractualization or face closure.

Ironically, the government is one of the biggest buyers of outsourced labor in the country today, he pointed out.

Recto, the Senate President Pro Tempore in the past 16th Congress, asked for a bureaucracy-wide inventory of temporary workers in the public sector under various rampant hiring schemes like “job order, ” “emergency hiring,” and “Memorandum of Agreement” which are all synonyms for “endo-prone employment.”

He was referring to the popular shorthand for “end of contract” or the termination of work after a fixed period which presidential candidates vowed to end if elected to office.

He described the size of casual employees in government today as “big as the Army.”

After teachers and soldiers, they are the third biggest class of workers, Recto claimed.

‘Casual republic’ He cited the last inventory of government personnel – done by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) in 2010 – which pegged the number of contractual workers at 21,315 and casual workers at 97,951 or nearly 120,000.

These are workers whose compensation was booked as “personal services” – the bureaucratic term for payroll-related expense.

Not captured by the count, Recto said, were casual workers hired pursuant to “job orders,” whose pay comes from Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE).

Also not included are workers in subcontracted tasks like security and janitorial services, he added.

In 2014, the national government – excluding local governments, spent 111.6 billion for outsourced general services like janitorial (12.1 billion), environmental and sanitary (12.1 billion), and security (13.2 billion).

That year, the national government also spent 19.6 billion in the basic pay of its contractual and casual employees.

But the local governments spent more – almost 110 billion for salaries of casuals, 13.2 billion for contractuals, and 1623 million for emergency, substitute and part-time workers.

“We are also spending billions for consultants who are basically contractual employees. Kaya nga dapat mayroong bagong census para malaman ang laki ng casual republic,” Recto said.

Tapping MOOE to hire personnel has been resorted to by many government agencies “to economize, to keep personnel services (PS) at a low level, to evade paying pension premiums, to avoid the complicated hiring processes, to accommodate persons who are not yet civil service eligible.”

1779 B for personnel services But for casual employees “who have been in the service for at least five years, who are civil serviceeligible, and whose work has been rated excellent,” Recto is proposing to government “to start a process on how to bring them into the regular workforce.”

This should be the sequel to President Duterte’s’ order to end “endo,” Recto said.

But this, he admitted, is a tall task considering the huge PS expense of the government which will reach 1779 billion this year.

“May mga pension repercussions ang regularization. Maraming pressure sa payroll. There’s the second tranche of SSL IV, the order to double the salary of soldiers, cops and teachers,” Recto said.

For local governments to absorb some of their casuals and for them to comply with the Salary Standardization Law IV, Recto said their share from internal revenue taxes must be raised from 40 to 50 percent and in computing the same, some of Bureau of Customs (BOC) collections must be included.

Recto has filed a bill increasing the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) share of local government units to 50 percent, and another bill factoring in BOC’s VAT and excise tax collection in computing the IRA.

Meanwhile, the Partido Manggagawa urged President Duterte to shame companies that practice contractualization, rather than shutting them down.

In a statement, PM chairman Renato Magtubo urged the government to start a “shame campaign” against the top practitioners of the controversial work scheme in the country.

He said the move may force the socalled “endo lords” to finally regularize their worker.

“Maybe the most respected endo lords can be shamed into stopping their abusive contracting schemes once they are named by the President. It is common knowledge that endo is the norm among the malls, airlines, hotels, restaurants, shops, factories and even plantations,” Magtubo said. (With a report from Samuel P. Medenilla)