DOLE lists 3,377 firms engaged in labor-only contracting

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has linked 3,377 companies to labor-only contracting (LOC) – 767 firms found engaged in LOC and 2,610 others suspected to be engaged in LOC. The 3,377 companies were among 99,526 establishments that were inspected from June 2016 to April 2018.

The DOLE identified the top 20 companies with the most number of affected workers as:

1. Jollibee Food Corporation – 14,960

2. Dole Philippines – 10,521 3. PLDT – 8,310 4. Philsaga Mining Corporation – 6,524

5. General Tuna Corporation – 5,216

6. SumiPhils Wiring Systems Corporation – 4,305 7. Franklin Baker, Inc.– 3,400 8. PilipinasKyohritsu, Inc.– 3,161 9. Furukawa Automotive Systems Phil, Inc. – 2,863 10. Magnolia, Inc.– 2,248 11. KCC Property Holdings, Inc.– 1,802

12. Sumifru Philippines Corp.– 1,687

13. Hinatuan Mining Corporation – 1,673

14. KCC Mall De Zamboanga– 1,598

15. Brother Industries (Philippines), Inc.– 1,582

16. Philippine Airlines and PAL Express – 1,483

17. Nidec Precision Philippines Corporation – 1,400

18. Peter Paul Phil Corporation – 1,362

19. Dolefil Upper Valley Operations – 1,183 20. DOLE Stanfilco– 1,131. According to DOLE, labor-only contracting exists when the contractor merely recruits, supplies, or places workers to perform a job or work for a principal under any of the following circumstances: the contractor does not have substantial capital, investments in the form of tools, equipment, machineries, supervision, work premises, among others, and the contractors employees recruited and placed are performing activities which are directly related to the main business operation of the principal; or the contractor does not exercise the right to control over the performance of the work of the employee.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said the companies listed will be ordered to regularize concerned workers.

“Compliance within a month would already be acceptable, but not in a year’s time,” he said in a press briefing Monday.

Bello said it is also possible that some of the companies on the list already complied with the order.

“It’s possible that some already complied. For example, Jollibee appealed our decision and their lawyer came to me a week ago and submitted a voluntary regularization. So, we will validate this. But its only 1,000 workers every year, that's too small,” he said.

“Maybe, if they can regularize ten percent of the total number of their employees every year we will accept that,” added Bello.

The labor chief also stressed that they don’t intend to put the companies on the list in a bad light.

“The directive of the President is to give a list of non-compliant companies and that’s what we did. After we give them directive to comply and they followed, we will also announce that they complied,” he said.

Last month, Duterte ordered Bello to submit within 30 days an inventory of companies that are involved in “laboronly contracting.”

The Labor department already submitted the initial list to President Duterte last week.

More than 900,000 establishments are set to be inspected by the DOLE.