MANILA, Philippines — Employers have expressed opposition to a bill that seeks to give workers the right to disconnect after work hours, saying it would only create unnecessary tension with employees and turn away foreign investors.
This sentiment was conveyed by the head of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP).
“I don’t see any advantage except that it’s nice to hear. Those who don’t want to be disturbed will be pleased, but at the end of the day it’s a disadvantage for everyone,” ECOP president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. said in a recent radio interview.
House Bill (HB) 9735 seeks to amend Presidential Decree 442, or the Labor Code, to include an employee’s right to disconnect from office communications after work hours. The bill filed on Dec. 12 by Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez is pending with the House committee on labor and employment.
While the proposed law will apply to private sector employees, it states that the employer “shall determine the conditions and exemptions, subject to such rules and regulations as the Secretary of Labor and Employment shall provide.”
Under HB 9735, employees will not be reprimanded, punished, or subjected to disciplinary action if they disregard work-related communications sent after work hours.
Ortiz-Luis Jr., however, argued that the proposed regulation would only ruin the workplace peace prevailing right now, where employers and employees are enjoying a partnership kind of relationship, with employees wanting to be kept in the loop.
“Industrial peace in the Philippines is good,” he said, adding that the abundance of unnecessary laws threatens industrial peace.
“Many antiquated laws need to be scrapped. We don’t need to keep adding to them. It just creates tension in the relationship between employee and employer,” he said.
Moreover, Ortiz-Luis warned that the bill would have an adverse effect on foreign direct investments.
He explained that if the draft legislation is passed, foreign investors, say, in the US, a country in a different time zone from the Philippines, would then find themselves violating a Philippine law if they contact a Filipino employee during off-duty hours.
“Investors will just go to Vietnam or Thailand where the labor laws are friendly. We already have enough problems so let’s not add to them,” he added.