EDITORIAL - DOLE should check BPO, IT sector practices

 The Department of Labor and Employment should start looking into the practices being employed in the BPO and IT sectors. Many employees in these sectors, being young, are not very familiar with their rights and thus ripe for exploitation. 

Reports are in fact growing that there is a growing trend toward contractualization in these sectors, much like the practice being employed in the services and retail industries, where chances for regularization are at best slim. 

The situation in the BPO and IT sectors is that with such a vast pool of talent, some companies give their current employees the run around when it comes to proper salaries and the chance to become regular. 

Some current employees in some BPO and IT companies are reportedly made to work on mere provisional contracts and just given allowances instead of real salaries. They are kept in this status for as long as they can bear it.

When these employees can no longer bear with this unfair labor practice, they are forced to resign and look for other places of employment, which is really no skin off the backs of their employers because, as stated earlier, there is a vast pool of talent available to replace them. 

But what happens is that the skills and talents of these young workers are being exploited. Worse, they are exposed to labor practices that can derail their honesty and idealism and reshape their characters that make them cynical and susceptible to corruption. 

To be sure, there are many BPO and IT companies that are very solid and reputable and stick to very high standards of excellence, not only in their service and operations, but also in their methods of employment. 

But there are always exceptions. There are always those who find in the tremendous boom in these industries the opportunities to make a killing at the expense of others. It is these unscrupulous operators who give these growth sectors a bad name. 

Exploitation of workers is a form of corruption. So if the Department of Labor and Employment is in step with President Aquino’s fight against corruption, then it better start looking into the operations and labor practices in the BPO and IT sectors.