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BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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ILOILO City – In line with President Rodrigo Duterte’s aim to reduce the number of contractual workers in the country by 50 percent this year, Western Visayas employers have started regularizing their contractual employees.
According to Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) regional director Salome Siaton, 38 companies have so far voluntarily regularized 761 employees.
The employers pledged to regularize 201 more contractual workers, added Siaton.
“We are pushing for that and we are looking into it in terms of the number of those contractually employed by companies. Right now we don’t have the concrete figures,” Siaton said.
Meanwhile, Siaton lauded the Christmas job fair of the Iloilo Public Employment Services Office (PESO) and other job fairs conducted by other local government units.
These fairs contribute in increasing the employment rate in Western Visayas, she said.
“The turnout of companies participating is high. There are plenty of applicants for both local and overseas jobs. I don’t have the statistics yet but in general, PESO-Iloilo is contributing a lot,” Siaton said.
In Manila, Labor secretary Silvestre Bello III said DOLE will try to reduce the incidence of “endo” – “end of contract” or “labor-only contracting” employment – by 50 percent this year so that by the end of 2017, contractualization will be a thing of the past.
“Endo” or contractual workers are hired for a fixed term of less than the six months under which labor laws mandate they automatically become regular employees, and are thus deprived of job security and benefits./PN
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