NEDA bats for performance-based job security bill

By Vanne Terrazola, Manila Bulletin, Aug 29, 2019

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) is pushing for a performance-based job security measure to replace the vetoed Security of Tenure (SOT) Bill.

Socieconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia bared when Senator Joel Villanueva, Senate Committee on Finance vice chairman, confronted him regarding the presidential veto of the measure during Thursday’s Development Budget Coordination Committee’s (DBCC) briefing on the government’s spending plan for 2020 with the Senate panel.

Pernia likewise revealed that President Duterte vetoed the SOT Bill after industry leaders lobbied against the measure.

He made the revelation when Senator Juan Edgardo Angara, Senate Committee on Finance chairman, pressed him to set the record straight on the security of tenure issue.

Villanueva, who sponsored the SOT Bill in the 17th Congress as chair of the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment, and Human Resources Development, believes that NEDA’s belated comments on the “endo” bill triggered Duterte’s veto. He asked Pernia to clarify the administration’s direction regarding the “constitutional guarantee on security of tenure.”

Villanueva lamented anew the support and assurance from members of the Executive branch on the SOT bill, including President’s certification of the measure, only to be scrapped in the end.

“What do you want to happen with contractualization?…Tell us what you want so it’s very clear,” Angara, in support of Villanueva, asked Pernia.

“You should be very clear about what you want as to this issue,” he told Pernia.

Responding to the queries, Pernia denied that the NEDA was to blame for the presidential veto, saying the companies were the ones who lobbied against the SOT bill.

“I don’t think that it was our comments that made the President veto [the SOT bill]. I think it was more of the intercession of the industry. They went to see him (Duterte),” he told the senators.

“But anyway, perhaps what would be better for both the labor and the industry is performance-based job security,” he continued.

With a “performance-based” SOT measure, Pernia said workers who are performing their jobs well will be assured of job security since employers would have no reason to fire them.

“If the worker is performing, there is no reason at all for the employer to complain about his worker and therefore, get rid of him,” he said.

But Villanueva opposed this, saying such policy favors only the businesses.

“What the secretary is talking about, ‘performance-based job security’, but Mr. Chairman, this is security of the capitalists,” Villanueva said.

Villanueva told Pernia to review the SOT bill passed by the Senate, which, he pointed out, was “even business-friendlier than what is happening right now.”

NEDA Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon, meanwhile, denied that the state planning agency failed to communicate with the Senate its concerns about the SOT bill.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, for his part, said there should be a “closer coordination” between the executive and the legislative departments.

While admitting that the veto of the SOT bill was “not normal”, being a certified priority measure of the administration, Drilon said the President’s decision should be respected.

“That’s how our system works. The president vetoes an act of Congress and the policy that Congress wants to promulgate does not happen,” he said.

“The policies as enunciated in the certification should not be vetoed but it happened,” he maintained.

The SOT Bill was vetoed by Duterte just days before it was supposed to lapse into law on July 27.

The NEDA, in its position paper, recommended the veto of the enrolled anti-endo bill for being “anti-employment, anti-small business, and anti-new business.”

It added that the measure “fails to address the major cause of the ‘endo’ practice.”

Last July 29, Villanueva refiled the SOT bill and expressed hope that a clarification is made that led to the President’s rejection of the bill.