[Six months after] Workers picket DOLE, condemn contractualization directive

Six months after the Labor Department issued a directive which it claimed will end contractualization, workers led by labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno picketed the department’s office in Intramuros, Manila to condemn the Aquino government for promoting the employment scheme.

When it released Department Order 18-A Series of 2011 last Nov. 14, the Department of Labor and Employment claimed that the directive would end the prevalent 5-5-5 employment scheme in which workers are hired for just five months and then re-hired for another five months.

KMU said the DOLE failed to regularize contractual workers after six months of implementing the DO.

“It’s been six months since the DO was released and we are not seeing contractuals being regularized en masse, even under service contractors. Capitalists have just shortened contracts with service contractors or laid off workers before they reach five or six months,” said Roger Soluta, KMU secretary-general.

“The truth is that the new policy merely serves as a license for contractual employment. The DOLE’s hype that the DO will lead to an end to contractualization is just that, a hype,” he added.

“Consistent with its refusal to really increase workers’ wages, the Aquino government is promoting contractualization – one of the main ways capitalists press down workers’ wages,” he said.

The workers held up placards that read “Anim na buwan na, kontraktwal pa rin kami (It has been six months and we’re still contractuals),” condemning Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III for promoting contractualization.

“It was easy to see that the DOLE’s regularization hype was just a hoax. The government that allowed Lucio Tan’s contractualization via outsourcing scheme in the Philippine Airlines, involving some 2,600 workers, cannot be relied upon to ban the employment scheme,” Soluta said.

“On the issues of wage hikes and contractual employment, Aquino is consistently pro-capitalist and anti-worker. It is clear that he is continuing the previous governments’ policy of attracting foreign investors by offering cheap and repressed labor,” he added.

“Contractual workers receive lower wages and do not receive benefits. Because they can easily be laid off from work, it is more difficult for them to exercise their trade-union rights, such as forming unions,” he said.