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Join the Battle Against Contractualization, Endo

Recently, PLDT locked horns with the Department of Labor and Employment over the termination of more than 7,000 contractual employees.

Labor unions, along with the working masses who have been victimized by labor-only contractualization have expressed outrage over the unjust termination of outsourced employees.

DOLE claims to have handed down an order to PLDT, to regularize the said employees last April 30. But true to its nature, the telecommunications giant played its usual delaying tactics, stretching the process up to 2017.

This is a very familiar scenario where a giant corporation, which continually extracts tons of cash from the exploitation of our fellow wage earners, tries to skirt the law and even uses the law itself to its advantage.

This issue shouldn’t be shoved under the rug like many other disputes relating to the unfair, unjust, but seemingly unstoppable practice of “endo.”

WHAT'S ENDO, CONTRACTUALIZATION?

Endo, short for “end of contract,” is the practice where an  employer hires a worker for a definite period of time, usually for 5 months (hence the other name for it, 5-5-5). After the contract, the employer fires the employee and hires another employee to do the same job.

The new employee will then have to work for another 5 months, until the employee fires him or her again to hire someone new. The cycle goes on and on, leaving employees stripped of the chance for any kind of job security. Many companies use the same 5-5-5 tactic, so switching to another company doesn’t promise job security or any kind of personal security for that matter.

The companies on the other hand, are guaranteed their daily, obsecene profits no matter what.

The sorry state of employment in the Philippines, coupled with its culture of tolerating bad labor practices and undermployment, ensures a steady stream of willing wage earners who have no other choice but to submit themselves to this exploitative system of termination every five months.

Quite disappointingly, the law mandates this kind of practice. Contractualization in its purest form isn’t exactly endo, but companies use it to perpetrate the 5-5-5 practice.

What do companies try to evade? It’s the regularization of employees. Under the same labor law, employees who have worked for at least 6 months have the right to be a “regular” employee of the company.

Being a regular employee means that the worker gains access to various privileges and benefits on top of his or her job security. Among the benefits are paid sick leaves, paid vacation leaves, SSS and PAGIBIG memberships, health insurance members, and other perks the costs of which should be shouldered by the company.

These benefits and privileges seem to be forever elusive for the workers stuck in the exploitative loop. On the flipside, huge corporations like PLDT suck the life out of their workers while accumulating more wealth all the while depriving its employees their right to regularization.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE SYSTEM

These corporations do not want diminished income and revenue.

They just can’t let go of the money they need to spend for the benefits of their employees. So even before the employees reach the 6-month mark, they terminate the contract to avoid being regulated by DOLE and the law itself, which requires companies to regularize employees who have worked for at least six months in a company.

Huge companies also hire subcontractors, which in turn hire workers that will work as contractual employees. Usually after 5 months, these workers transfer to another company, and then another, and then another, without ever being a regular employee.

Filipino wage earners have become nomads in their own land, and all because these corporations heartlessly exploit their own – the same people that make billions of pesos of profits possibly annually.

Subcontractors usually get the larger slice of the company’s payment to the workers, while the workers are forced to subside with what pittance the subcontracting company pays them. In many cases, workers are kept at entry-level salaries - forever.

END ENDO NOW

As a man raised by a mother who has spent the better part of her life working as a contractual employee for various factories, I have firsthand experience relating to the struggle that such workers undergo.

Contractual employees have no job security and that in itself is reason enough for them to retaliate.

However, what keeps them from doing so is the need to survive and to avoid being jobless for an extended period of time. Never mind the dire circumstances in many factories. Never mind the lack of benefits. Never mind the dehumanizing treatment of companies. What’s important is that they have a job that pays a tiny wage.

Moreover, the dehumanizing effect of such circumstances forces employees to live passively with the injustice. They feel powerless against companies that can hire the best lawyers to circumvent laws imposed by government arms.

Even collectively, most of them would rather settle for 5-month stints than go toe to toe with business giants. Companies treat them as paid tools, though unwillingly, and they feel like they have no choice but to agree.

For them, it’s not easy to voice out concerns, much less call for the end of endo.

The fight, however, doesn’t end there. There IS a law against this abusive practice. The first step to the right direction is to enforce the law and prevent companies from skirting it again.

And we, the better-privileged to some extent, need to stand by them, and demand the government to take more effective actions against the practice of endo and contractualization. More importantly, we need to call out companies like PLDT that thrive and garner billions while they pay their workers scraps. We shouldn’t keep quiet.

End endo now.

Sources:

Why Contractualization is Bad For Everyone. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/147934-docena-why-contractualization-bad-for-everyone 4 July 2018

DOLE Orders PLDT to Regularize Workers. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/nation/206408-dole-order-pldt-regularize-workers 4 July 2018

|| This column is for the segment “PILOSOPORN” by Ace Bagtas, a columnist of the Katipunan ng Alternatibong Dibuho, Liriko, at TItik.