End of endo meeting with Duterte postponed: Tanjusay

FILE: President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, in his speech during the inauguration of the Lisap Bridge Project in Bongabong, Oriental Mindoro on April 3, 2018, cites that the government could build more bridges like the Lisap Bridge if there is no resistance from armed groups. ALBERT ALCAIN/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO

For the third time, the President’s supposed meeting with labor group leaders in regards to ending contractualization in the country was postponed.

Labor groups drafted an executive order (EO) for President Rodrigo Roa Duterte to sign, but their supposed meeting on April 16, Monday, was postponed once again.

One of the President’s promises was to end ‘end of contract,’ shortened as ‘endo,’ as it remains to be one of the main concerns of the labor group sector.

“We were advised by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) that the meeting with the President has been called off,” Associated Labor Union-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) spokesperson Alan Tanjusay said in an interview with The Manila Times.

In fact, on April 15, the Vice President of ALU-TUCP-Nagkaisa Coalition’s released a statement on their expectation for today’s decision.

“We therefore trust that on Monday, he will sign an executive order that will include the words ‘Consistent with the policy of this government, the direct hiring of a worker by the principal employer shall be the general norm of direct hiring,” Louie Corral, the Vice President of the union said.

Meanwhile, ALU-TUCP’s president Michael Mendoza stressed in another statement that the EO will “undo injustice.”

“[The draft EO] will undo decades of injustice to millions of contractualized works and endo employees enslaved in poverty by contractualization work schemes resulting in poor wages, inadequate social protection benefits, insecurity of tenure and unsafe and unhealthy workplaces, all this amid growing profit-taking by corporations and unprecedented economic growth,” he said.

Earlier this April, the Philippine government through Senior Deputy Executive Secretary, now Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, said that the Executive branch’s power in the issue is limited.

(Read: Labor groups push for endo regulation if not ban)

“The main problem there is the things that they want to happen is something that executive department is not empowered to do. Legislative action is needed,” Gueverra said in a press briefing on April 2, Monday.

“If you want something like a total ban on contractualization, you need a law to repeal or amend that particular provision of the labor code. An EO (executive order) is meant to supplement or give implementing details of what the law provides, but it cannot add or subtract or substantially alter what the law provides,” he added.