By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
As long as our concept of generating jobs remains the same, there will always be a lot of people chasing a few jobs and so the law of supply and demand will always be stuck against laborers. This is exacerbated by our industry in producing babies.
So employers will always be able to circumvent laws against contractualization and Labor Code provisions mandating the “regularization” of employees who had been working for more than six months. It would be easy as laborers are willing to submit presigned and undated forms or letters stating that they had resigned from their employment. Their justification is, it is better than nothing or going hungry.
The only way to lick this is to lessen the labor supply so employers or management will have a hard time replacing employees. They will have no choice but to regularize those who had been there for more than six months.
Another part of the solution is to generate more employment in the country side by putting up businesses particularly those being run by cooperatives whose members are from the respective communities where the businesses will be located. How to capitalize such businesses? Big companies should be made to finance these as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility.
The labor groups or unions should also be made to generate employment for their members. Big labor unions are collecting hundreds of millions of pesos from their members or from their employers. But where are these money? They are usually being corrupted by labor union officials. They cannot even come up with employment opportunities for their members.
The education of laborers should also a main concern of labor unions. Opportunities should be created for union members to upgrade their skills or for them to acquire the knowhow to put up small businesses that will employ family members if not those in the neighborhood or even beyond. And how about allotting a portion of union funds to finance these?
Sadly, in many instances, the union members are left alone to wallow in their ignorance which make them prone to waste away whatever little money they earn in vices. And usually their labor leaders are not good examples on how to veer away from these.
So the history of labor unions is marked by their reputation that their moral backbone (if any) is so easy to break. It is very easy to bribe their members or leaders whenever they try to come up with a concerted effort to force management to accord them better benefits or employment terms. Low education is one reason for this.
With all these, it would not be easy to end or abolish the practice of endo. For this to happen, a total overhaul of our socioeconomic and political system is needed. But then again, this is just a motherhood statement.**
