Rody to study objection to Security of Tenure bill

Although poised to sign the Security of Tenure (SOT) bill, President Duterte is still ready to consider the opposition of business groups to the measure which aims to protect workers’ rights by removing the ambiguities in laws that prohibit labor-only contracting.

“The President is always appreciative and considerate of whatever

opposition or concerns raised by any sector in this country relative to any bill passed in Congress and subject to his signature or veto,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said at a press briefing yesterday.

Under the SOT bill transmitted to the Office of the President, labor only contracting exists when the job contractor merely supplies, recruits and places workers to a contractee, and when workers supplied to a contractee perform tasks that are listed by the industry to be directly related to the core business of the contractee, and when the contractee has direct control and supervision of the workers supplied by the contractor.

Senate labor committee chairman Joel Villanueva has said the bill clarifies ambiguities in existing laws that have allowed employers to go around the ban on labor only contracting.

The SOT bill also classifies workers into four types: regular, probationary, project and seasonal.

Once the bill becomes law, project and seasonal workers will have the same rights as regular employees like the payment of minimum wage and social protection benefits for the duration of their employment.

The classification aims to curb practices that misclassify employees and prevent them from obtaining regular status, Villanueva said in a recent statement.

The measure, however, does not totally ban labor only contracting. All contractors have to secure a license from the labor department to engage in job contracting.

Business groups have asked Duterte to veto the SOT bill, saying it would be inconsistent with the businesses’ constitutional right to contract labor as part of management prerogative.

They also warned that the bill could prod businesses into removing low-skilled jobs contracted out to service providers by using automation and artificial intelligence, redesigning work processes or transferring work to more investor-friendly foreign destinations.

Banning “endo” or endof-contract was one of the campaign promises of Duterte during the 2016 elections. He has issued an executive order implementing labor law provisions against illegal contracting but admitted that a law is needed to ban all forms of contractualization.

Last September, the President certified as urgent the bill that seeks to ban labor-only contracting, saying the practice is causing poverty and underemployment in the country.

Good enough

The country’s largest labor group said it still wants the President to sign the SOT bill even if it thinks the measure lacks teeth.

“We prefer that the proposed Security of Tenure law be signed by the President rather than remain silent while the employers and economic managers cannot give a few morsels to workers,” Trade Union Congress of the Philippines president Raymond Mendoza said.

While claiming that the bicameral process had been rushed, Mendoza expressed belief that the proposed law could eventually be amended to tighten some of its provisions.

Mendoza said the proposed SOT bill, if enacted into law, provides clearer definition of what labor only contracting (LOC) should be.

He said employers are calling for the President to veto the proposed measure because it categorically prohibits LOC, currently being widely practice by commercial firms.