DAVAO CITY—Hiring sales girls on a contractual basis (known as endo or end of contract) is an “unfair” trade practice since their services are essential to business operations, incoming Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III told reporters on Tuesday.
On that premise, Bello said he would be requiring all companies in the Philippines to regularize at least 80 percent of employees in shopping malls.
“You can’t operate a mall without sales girls,” Bello said in a press briefing in Davao City.
Bello also said he was mulling over a change in name of the Department of Labor and Employment to “probably be Department of Labor and Management or Department of Labor and Employer.”
Bello said that he wanted to remove the connotation that the Labor Department is “one sided,” therefore the need to focus also on management.
Under the current setup, Bello said that malls could outsource the hiring of janitorial and security services because these were not as essential to operations as sales staff.
The new administration may propose an arrangement of 80 percent regular employees and 10 percent non-regular employees under a Department Administrative Order to implement this requirement. Such moves are in line with President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s instructions to solve the problem of contractualization in the country.
Duterte had reiterated his plan for a gradual phaseout of contractualization depending on “circumstances of the company.”
This was seconded by incoming Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez who said that contractualization can’t be completely eliminated in certain industries or companies because of the nature of their business.
Bello said that the 80-20 arrangement could be imposed upon bigger companies while for smaller ones, say ones with 200 employees, a 90-10 arrangement can be imposed.
“Sometimes, the needs of the company are not permanent. For example, during Christmas season, they will need additional employees. That would be okay, if they hire on a seasonal or project basis,” said Bello.
Bello reiterated that all employees who render work necessary for the daily operations or main business of a company should be regularized.