Senate SoT bill to legalize ‘Endo’ scheme–KMU

By Bernadette D. Nicolas, Businessmirror, May 31, 2019

MILITANT labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) warned on Thursday that the “treacherous railroading” of the passage of the Senate’s version of the Security of Tenure (SOT) bill will legalize “Endo,” or the end-of-contract scheme, through manpower agencies.

Various labor groups earlier denounced on Wednesday the cancellation of the harmonization of the House of Representatives and the Senate versions of the bill, saying that they will not support the bill if only the Senate version will be considered as it is not the law that the trade unions and workers had envisioned for so many years.

“The passage of [the Senate] version of Security of Tenure bill is not the end of Endo. Rather, this version of the SoT bill will institutionalize and legitimize contractualization through manpower agencies,” KMU Secretary-General Jerome Adonis said in a statement.

Labor groups have slammed Senate Bill 1826, which was already passed on third and final reading, for not prohibiting fixed-term and multilayered contracting.

The groups are also criticizing the bill’s provision on penalties and fines for employers and agencies engaged in illegal labor-only contracting as weak, adding that the imposition of penalties on erring agencies and employers are not categorically stated, leaving room for circumvention.

KMU has also once again expressed its frustration over the President’s purported failure to end contractualization.

In September 2018, President Duterte certified the SoT bill urgent, which fast-tracked the interpellation of the bill.

On Labor Day 2018, the President signed Executive Order 51 prohibiting illegal contractualization, after mounting pressure from workers for Duterte to make good on his campaign promise to end contractualization. However, critics said EO 51 will not really end contractualization in the country.

“Department Order 174 issued by the Department of Labor and Employment and Duterte’s EO 51 both failed to stop contractualization and instead continued the failed policy of only regulating manpower agencies through licensing and higher capitalization requirement, which are easily circumvented by both agencies and employers,” Adonis said.

“And now, with the soon-to-be Security of Tenure law, these policies that perpetuate employment through manpower agencies are becoming a full-fledge law,” he added.

Adonis accused big employers of trying to railroad the Senate version.

“Their lobby efforts seem to be paying off with the Senate unanimously approving an obviously watered down version of the bill,” he said.

“The labor sector is united in rejecting this version of the SoT bill. We continue to call for the passage of a genuine Security of Tenure law that will prohibit job contracting through third-party agencies, which has long been an instrument of employers in evading the regularization of their workers,” Adonis added.