Days after the President vetoed the Security of Tenure Bill, Deputy Speaker Eduardo Villanueva of CIBAC Party-list has filed a measure that institutionalizes the security of tenure in private business enterprises.
Villanueva’s House Bill 3367 has a counterpart measure in the Senate where his son, Senator Joel Villanueva, is a member.
The measure is a pet bill of Villanueva who is its principal author at the Senate and the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Labor and Employment and Human Resources in the 17th Congress.
“Pursuant to the Constitution, serving the greatest interest and general welfare of our people is our priority and we will continue to fight for the protection of the laborers,” Villanueva said.
In the last 17th Congress, the bill was already approved and ratified by chambers of Congress. The President vetoed the bill last week.
“The battle for decades of the working class to be freed from economic injustice was delayed but we will not stop until social justice is served and the rights of the people are honored,” the former communist leader turned evangelist turned legislator said.
House Bill 3367 seeks to protect laborers from labor-only contracting that is defined by the following conditions: (1) when the job contractor merely supplies workers to a contractee; (2) when the workers supplied by the contractor perform jobs directly related to the contractee’s principal business; and (3) when the job contractor does not control the workers deployed to the contractee.
Further, it simplifies the classification of workers to only two: Regular and probationary.
Project and seasonal employees are to be classified regular for the duration of their employment. All other forms of employment are strictly prohibited.
The bill, contrary as to how other people perceive it, Villanueva said was neither anti-employers nor anti-contractualization.
It does not seek to end legal contractualization but instead simply aims to ensure that all parties involved in labor contracts are duly protected by the law.
Thus, it allows industry tripartite councils to determine the kind of jobs which are directly related to one’s principal business.
This will provide avenues for the labor sector to express their concerns about contracting certain jobs and the employers to present the realities of their businesses’ operations, the output of which is an industry list of jobs that can be contracted, to which both parties will be legally bound.
“In the name of fairness and order in our business and labor sectors, and most of all, for the sake of our Filipino laborers who have been constantly living in fear of finding not just a new job but new means to support their families once their [supposedly illegal] contract ends, the passage of this bill is earnestly sought,” Villanueva said.
