Leaders and members of the national labor union group
Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) held a protest rally at the Department of Labor and
Employment (DOLE) Office in Intramuros, Manila on Friday and demanded the
junking of DOLE Order No. 18-A, Series of 2011.
Led by KMU Chairperson Elmer “Ka Bong” Labog, they later
presented to Labor Undersecretary Joel Maglunsod the labor sector’s proposals
on how to end contractualization in the country.
The group said that DO No. 18-A has institutionalized
contractualization by setting guidelines that teach employers how to circumvent
labor laws and legalize their contractual employment schemes.
“The DO 18-A must be junked. It has institutionalized
contractualization by teaching employers how to bend our laws and violate
workers’ rights to legalize their contractual employment schemes," said
Labog.
Maglunsod said he fully agrees that the implementation of DO
18-A has led to rampant contractualization, resulting to a drastic increase in
the number of temporary contractual workers.
Maglunsod also said that he is fully supporting the labor
group's appeal and will suggest to DOLE Secretary Silvestre Bello III the
junking of such order.
He said there is a possibility that they can repeal the
order although he admitted that such task is something that cannot be done at a
glance and requires study, consultation and time.
He said that existing labor laws and provisions have to be
revisited or studied further to see how these can be transformed into full
reality.
Maglunsod said they have been doing several moves such as
capacity building and workshops among employers to distinguish the differences
between contractualization and "endo" (end of contract) to help
understand it so they will also focus on the welfare of their employees.
He said that the way to go is resorting to some "war
tactics" wherein they will initially start with the reduction of
"endo" until they end up with the goal of totally taking away
contractualization.
As of the timeline, he said that they are targetting to
reduce "endo" by 50 percent this coming December and eliminating it
totally by 2017.
To realize this, he said it is important that the laborers
and employees should be united for that goal.
Meanwhile, the group welcomed the Labor department’s efforts
to minimize the rampant contractualization in the country.
However, they said that they remain firm in pushing for more
concrete and decisive measures that DOLE should take to totally end all forms
of contractual employment schemes.
The almost two-hour dialogue between Maglunsod and the labor
leaders also tackled different workers’ issues such as the implementation of a
National Minimum Wage of PHP750, the urgent resolution of labor cases, junking
of the Single Entry Approach (SEnA) policy and the restrictive requirements on
Workers' Organization and Development Program (WODP), and the repression and
militarization of workers’ strikes.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=915527
The Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU-May One Movement) is a Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-affiliated labor front and is a founding member of the main CPP mulitsectoral umbrella front organization, the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN-New Patriotic Alliance).
ReplyDeleteLabor Undersecretary Joel Maglunsod has a 30 year association with the KMU where he served as the KMU's vice chairperson for Mindanao. He was also a member of the Anakpawis party-list, a CPP political front, where he ran and was elected to the Philippine Congress as an Anakpawis representative.
KNU dealing with Maglunsod is like negotiating with itself. lol This is what happens when you begin to appoint commies to key positions in the national government.