Establishments under the Employers Confederation of the Philippines will start the regularization of their employees this month.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, in a press briefing yesterday announcing the conclusion of an agreement with the ECOP for the implementation of a National Voluntary Regularization Plan, said an initial 30 to 40 percent workers of the 220,000 employees of ECOP member-companies will benefit from the program.
“As a start, between 30 to 40 percent of the workers of the pre-identified establishments will benefit from the plan,” Bello said. “But if they want to do it 100 percent, then it will be better,” he added.
This, he said, will cover workers in more than 3,200 establishments.
According to Bello, ECOP member-companies participating in the program will not be subjected to labor inspections for three years.
“We will be declaring a moratorium on labor inspection effective for three years, except when there is a complaint lodged against them,” he said.
The Labor chief expressed hope that the agreement, which will be signed this week, will set the stage for the massive regularization to be voluntarily initiated by the rest of the employers nationwide.
“We consider this agreement a breakthrough in the campaign of the government to reduce if not eliminate the practice of contractualization in the country. This is a significant leap forward in the attainment of the desire of the President to give the Filipino workers secure and decent jobs,” Bello said.
However, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines is doubting the ECOP-Department of Labor and Employment regularization pact.
“We thus find it hard to trust and believe that this agreement between DoLE and ECOP will bring about regularization of contractualized workers with their principal employers. We suspect this a way for some abusive employers to escape from labor inspection,” TUCP president Raymond Mendoza said in a statement.
“We therefore challenge ECOP and Do LE to show to us their agreement so that we can validate and double-check its veracity,” he added. (Leslie Ann G. Aquino)
