In a recent forum with the Capampangan in Media, Inc., Labog urged Pres. Duterte to issue an order for at least the big businesses in the country to stop labor contractualization, as he noted that a mere department order from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) was not enough to fulfi ll his election promise to end contractualization.
“The President’s election vow to finally end contractualization has remained as some kind of fake news. Big fi rms have continued to defy the DOLE order by firing contractuals or assigning them to other departments as new workers,” he lamented.
Labog cited studies indicating that 24.4 million workers out of some 49 million of the country’s work force have remained contractual. “This is on top of another 11.5 million employable Filipinos who are jobless,” he added.
Labog said that so far, the Duterte government has relied merely on DOLE’s Department Order No.174 to end contractualization, but that this is being ignored my many big companies.
“The DOLE has reported that some 60,000 contractual workers have already been regularized throughout the country, but up to now, the department still has to provide us with detailed documention of this,” he noted.
“In the absence of any legislation meant to fi nally end contractualization, I think a presidential fiat could be better than a mere department order from DOLE,” he stressed.
This, as KMU also supported the proposal for a P750 across-theboard minimum wage in the private sector and P16,000 monthly for workers in the government sector. “Even this is just about half of the government estimates of P1,119 daily minimum needed for the basic needs of a family of fi ve,” he noted.
