Workers Unite!
DOLE Order 18-02: Advocating contractualization

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) issued Department Order (DO) 18-02 on February 18, amending DO 10-97 that covered the issue of labor contractualization.

DO 10-97 has been used since 1997 to propagate and intensify the system of contractualization and attacks on the right of Filipino workers to job security. Due to widespread condemnation by the masses of workers, the Macapagal-Arroyo regime suspended the order in April 2001 and replaced it with DO 18-02. The latter, however, bears no essential difference from the order it replaced.

DOLE secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas lies when she says that DO 18-02 will attend to the interests of contractual workers. It merely reinforces the system of contractualization that has caused widespread ruination among workers since the 1990s. DOLE and the Macapagal-Arroyo regime turn a deaf ear to the cries of workers calling for an end to contractualization.

The order has not rectified the outrightly anti-worker provisions of DO 10-97 especially the grant of extensive rights to capitalists to fire workers on "just and authorized grounds". In fact, this provision of DO 10-97 and other provisions that trample on workers� right to job security have been advanced in past Supreme Court decisions (See related article on SC decisions).

Like DO 10-97, DO 18-02 also supposedly declares that labor-only contracting and other forms of abuse against workers by contractors or subcontractors are illegal. DO 18-02 lined up two oversimplified marks of labor-only contracting: 1) lack of capitalization on the part of contractors; and 2) lack of control by contractors on the actual labor process. It also listed down the kinds of abuses of contractual workers that were prohibited.

But this is all negated because DO 18-02 merely pays lip service to, and is inutile in countering labor-only contracting and similar abuses. DO 18-02 does not provide penalties for, and is thus useless, in the face of the many abuses against contractual workers. Its claims that contractual workers enjoy rights to safe and sound working conditions, labor standards, social welfare, organizing and job security are all a deception.

Whatever DOLE says, contractuals can never enjoy such "rights" as long as they remain contractual. Of what use are DOLE�s assertions of the rights of contractuals, when it has not put an end to contractualization itself and instead advocates it as legal and justified? Of what use is a law that supposedly advances the rights of contractual workers, when it fails to fulfill the basic demand for job security?

It is thus fitting for workers and the people to condemn this new law that legitimizes, and serves as a mere coverup for, various forms of labor-only contracting and the rampant and severe abuses of the system of contractualization perpetrated against workers.

April 2002
English Edition

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