DTI to contractors: Do ‘endo’ correctly

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is urging the Philippine Association of Legitimate Service Contractors (Palscon) to police its ranks to put an end to the abusive employment scheme called end-of-contract or “endo.”

Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said service contractors play a crucial role in the effective implementation of the DTI’s proposed win-win solution to endo.

The DTI-proposed win-win solution allows companies to either directly employ workers or source workers from legitimate service providers, but ensures that the workers get the right pay and benefits.

The DTI said it is important that Palscon members ensure that workers receive appropriate benefits.

“What is critical now is the compliance of legitimate service providers in giving full benefits to the workers,” Lopez said.

Palscon, a group of legitimate service providers in the country, has joined with other groups to end the illegal employment practice of contractualization known as endo.

“We have long realized that being members of Palscon, being players in the service contracting industry, whose businesses are primarily concerned with labor and employment, that we must maintain an impeccable reputation and image of a law abiding organization,” Palscon president Rhoda Caliwara said.

“We are called to a vocation to serve both our clients and more importantly our workers who are the foundation of the excellent service that we promise our clients,” she added.

The DTI said its win-win structure upholds workers’ security of tenure and an improvement of what has already been provided by the law on legitimate contracting.

Lopez said the win-win structure carries two specific provisions that safeguard workers’ tenure rights, specifically by making workers regular and permanent, as well as by affording them mandatory retirement benefits.

Lopez said the agency introduced the win-win structure based on the need to have a business policy environment that creates and encourages job and income generation.