The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines slammed foreign businessmen and their chambers of commerce for interfering in the country’s domestic policy following President Rodrigo Duterte’s veto of the proposed Security of Tenure bill.
READ: Rody vetoes job security bill
“They are engaged in an unwarranted interference in the purely domestic affairs of the Filipino people. They are also infringing [on] our sovereignty. We remind these businessmen and chambers that while we welcome their investments, it should not be at the expense of denying what should rightly be regular jobs for Filipinos,” the group said in a statement Friday.
The TUCP said it took 19 years in Congress for the SOT bill to reach this stage, only to have it blocked by those who “stand in the way of the struggle of Filipino workers and their families’ struggle for decent work through secure and regular jobs.”
The Department of Labor and Employment and labor groups had thrown their full support for the bill.
On Friday, they said President Duterte’s veto would enable companies to keep hiring contractual workers who will be terminated after only five months and rehired on the same contractual basis, as a way to avoid regularizing their workers.
The Employers Confederation of the Philippines, on the other hand, welcomed the veto.
“We’re very glad that Malacañang has finally made up its mind that the security of tenure bill will only lead to loss of jobs and investments,” ECOP president Sergio Ortiz-Luis said.
He said ECOP would police its own ranks to end abusive contractual practices.
Duterte clearly turned his back on workers, the TUCP said.
“The most democratic and most peaceful struggle of ordinary workers out of their poverty trap to endo are shut by a man who promised to introduce genuine change and uplift them,” TUCP President Raymond Mendoza said in a statement.
“President Duterte certified the security of tenure bill as an urgent measure in his 2018 State of the Nation Address, saying he did not have the power to end endo and only Congress, which has the legislative power, could do this. Now that Congress has acted on his certification, why veto something he certified as an urgent national bill?”
The TUCP also said the bill was not a disincentive to businesses, who could still hire seasonal and contractual workers.
The Pagkakaisa ng Timog Katagalugan-Kilusang Mayo Uno denounced the President’s veto as a betrayal of his campaign promise to end contractualization.
“Duterte has only put the nail on the coffin on the workers’ call for regular jobs under his administration, Similarly, there remains no justice for the more than 30,000 workers in the Southern Tagalog region that have been declared regular workers but have not returned even for a single minute as regular workers,” Pamantik-KMU said in a statement.
“In light of his betrayal against the people, we enjoin the call to intensify the workers’ fights outside the walls of Congress,” the group said.
Senator Joel Villanueva on Friday led senators in expressing disappointment over the presidential veto, while vowing to refile and prioritize the bill for the 18th Congress.
“Unfortunately, profit wins again with the veto of the SOT bill,” said Villanueva, who chaired the Senate labor committee.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III said the upper chamber “will refile and prioritize [it]. We will find an acceptable version.”
In a separate text message to GMA News, Sotto said he was “crestfallen but that’s how democracy works, and Congress, being dynamic, can refile [and have the bill passed again].”
Minority Leader Franklin Drilon also said he was saddened with the President’s decision because the Senate worked hard for its passage, as it was certified as urgent.
He said the bill can be refiled but the executive branch “must first get its act together.”
“We have frontline departments [DOLE and NEDA] with opposing views. We are unclear as to what the policy is. The bill passed by Congress essentially mirrors DOLE’s position but apparently the NEDA has a different one—which was eventually concurred with by the President,” Drilon said in a statement.
In the House of Representatives, Gabriela Party-list Rep. Arlene Brosas denounced the veto, calling it the President’s “biggest betrayal” of Filipino workers.
She said she and her fellow legislators would file a “stronger” anti-contractualization bill that would plug all the loopholes in the law that allow businesses to engage in job contracting.
“President Duterte’s veto of the security of tenure bill exposes his full allegiance to big businesses which lobbied hard against the measure,” Brosas said. “Despite certifying the measure as urgent and despite prominently vowing to end contractualization during the campaign period, the President pandered to the pleasure of business chambers by killing the anti-endo bill.”
Brosas accused Duterte of acting “in absolute compliance to the business sector’s demand not to sign the security of tenure law in utter disregard of his campaign promise. Duterte chose big business over workers and even over himself.”
“It is very clear in the veto message that the President wants to allow businesses to have the upper hand in outsourcing jobs “regardless of whether this is directly related to their business.”
“This essentially means unli-job contracting that will trap more workers in short-term, low-paying, and unsafe employment,” Brosas added.
Parañaque City Rep. Joy Tambunting said Congress would need to find “a better compromise between labor and management.”
Tambunting is the wife of former Parañaque City Rep. Gus Tambunting, who was the principal author of the measure at the House of Representatives during the 17th Congress.
READ: Workers’ plight lost in SONA oversight
READ: Jobs, wages, prices top picks to hear in SONA