What is President Duterte's labor agenda?
Well, we all know by now that in the area of public works, this administration's motto is "build, build, build" to usher what Secretary Art Tugade calls a golden era in Philippine infrastructures. Billions have been allocated, earmarked, and budgeted to fund these ambitious projects. In the area of foreign affairs, this government has shifted alliances from the west to the socialist and communist blocs. In the area of agrarian reform, the Duterte government is pushing for the total distribution of tenanted agricultural lands. Now, in the area of labor, what is this administration's plan on issues such as employment and unemployment, labor migration and the so-called labor mismatch, wages and workers' incomes, labor standards, labor relations, occupational safety and health, and unions, collective bargaining and unfair labor practices, as well as strikes and lockouts?
What is becoming very apparent is that President Duterte and DOLE Secretary Bello III are focusing on the abolition of ''endo'' and ''5-5-5'' working schemes. They have less interest on the issues of unemployment and labor migration. Of course, the president has seen the distressed OFWs in the Middle East. He even promised to stop sending domestic helpers abroad. Secretary Bello even expressed his plan to immediately suspend deployment of maids to Kuwait. But this government does not seem to have a complete, comprehensive and coherent master plan on employment, both domestic and international. They are just continuing the old model of promoting the endless diaspora of talents, even of the most vulnerable sectors among our workers.
On the area of workers' protection, the issuance of DO 174, amending DO 18-a, is scaring investors away from the country. Some regional offices and some labor law compliance officers are overacting and exceeding the bounds of the Secretary's visitorial powers. They are declaring valid job and service contracting as "labor-only contracting'' based on a misunderstanding of Article 106 of the Labor Code and exceeding the bounds of Article 128 of the same Code. The Labor Code, which is a Martial Law document is still being used to address millennial realities. It is the wrong law for the right time. It is a complete antithesis to globalization and the ASEAN integration. The current policies are removing the employers' flexibility and ability to compete under very trying and tight competitive business arena.
On the area of industrial peace and labor-dispute resolution, I am sad to say (being a former Labor arbiter and former DOLE undersecretary) that some Labor arbiters should be disciplined if not dismissed for gross incompetence and for notorious ineptitude. Some NLRC commissioners are being suspected of corruption and conflict of interest. A number of them are not attending to their cases because they work on moonlighting being professors of law and Bar reviewers. Well, there is nothing wrong with those academic entanglements. But when their backlog is left behind, then we have a problem. The NCMB is underutilized and voluntary arbitration is under used and even ignored. The SENa is not properly administered. And there are many sheriffs who deserve to be jailed for exacting dirty money from both the complainants and respondents.
In other words, the DOLE Secretary has a lot of cleansing to do. He is very busy negotiating peace with the NDF and the labor administration cannot just be left to the Usecs and the Asecs who come from the left, right, center and from other places, respectively. With all due respect, Labor Day should be a time for them to rethink the entire master plan and move on in one clear direction: labor, management and government together, no more and no less.
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