Senate will not allow mangling of SOT bill in bicam, says Sotto
Butch Fernandez | Business Mirror | May 27, 2019
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Senate President Vicente Sotto III allayed concerns by a jittery labor sector that last-ditch lobbying in Congress could still derail bicameral efforts and mangle the final version of the so-called End of Endo reform embodied in the Security of Tenure (SOT) bill.
“We will not allow it,” the Senate President told the BusinessMirror over the weekend.
The Senate President gave the assurance amid apprehensions by labor groups that lobbyists are working on their House counterparts to water down or avert approval of the awaited remedial legislation.
“It is best that the House just adopt our version,” the Senate leader said, adding, “then there will be no problems, at all.”
The final version earlier approved by the Senate defined security of tenure for workers in a move to effectively avert abuses in the practice of illegal contractualization.
Principally sponsored By Sen. Joel Villanueva, chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development, the “end of Endo” embodied in Senate Bill 1826 provided measures to “uphold the constitutionally guaranteed right to security of tenure.”
The bill affirms the ban on “labor-only” contracting, clarifying “ambiguities” in existing laws that, Villanueva said, was used by enterprising employers to go around the rules.
Villanueva lamented that workers long “suffered from the evils of Endo” that he denounced as “a practice that corrupts the dignity of labor.”
He added that the remedial legislation was crafted to “give all workers peace of mind when it comes to their employment.” The Senate last week passed on third and final reading the SOT bill, which the House had approved last year.
Sotto’s proposal for the House to adopt the Senate version may yet be heeded, in order to avoid protracted bicameral conference committee debates, given that in her letter to Sotto before Congress resumed sessions last May 20, Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo listed those bills she deemed should be given priority in the last session days of the 17th Congress. She said that the House may consider adopting the Senate version of some bills in order to hasten the legislative process.
In a statement last Thursday, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines Vice President Louie Corral said they are wary of a possible intervention by the Department of Finance in a bid to derail the SOT.
He said workers also expect similar moves by the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (Ecop) and the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce (JFCC).
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