Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 4) — The Labor department said it will be submitting to Congress by the end of September a new version of the Security of Tenure bill — a measure which President Rodrigo Duterte vetoed in July.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III told lawmakers Wednesday that they will be forwarding their version of the measure after consulting with stakeholders.
“We have a draft, but we also gave a copy to labor and to management for them to give their suggested revisions or amendments or whatever provisions they would want to be incorporated in the proposed SOT bill,” Bello said during the House Appropriations committee’s hearing on the Labor department’s proposed ₱14.42-billion budget for 2020.
Duterte rejected the SOT bill that passed in the 17th Congress, saying the measure “unduly broadens the scope and definition of prohibited labor-only contracting,” to the detriment of employers.
Had Duterte not rejected the measure which he certified as urgent, it would have prohibited business entities from hiring workers on a contractual basis and effectively banned the outsourcing of workers through manpower agencies.
It also wanted companies to absorb or regularize all workers. All employees, including project and seasonal employees except those on probationary status, are entitled to benefits received by regular workers under the rejected bill.
The same measure has been refiled in both houses of Congress.
Ending contractualization is among the promises made by Duterte on the campaign trail.
The Labor department said 504,000 contractual workers have been regularized since 2016, but it acknowledged that this is barely making a dent, as there are still more workers waiting to be regularized.
“We have a long way to go,” Bello said.
