She said it was done with the connivance of the executive’s economic advisers.
Basilio said that the Arroyo government has also tolerated the “contractualization” of workers through the Advisory No. 2 series of 2009 issued by the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole).
The Dole order allows companies to adopt flexible working hours among workers supposedly to cope with the impact of the global financial crisis. It encourages such arrangements as the “compressed” workweek, job rotation, and reduction of workdays, forced leave and flexible holidays, supposedly as “measures” for companies to cope with the impact of the financial crisis.
Immediately after the labor day rally on May 1, members of the Maragusan United Workers Union join Makabayan's "meeting de avance" at the Freedom Park. (davaotoday.com photo)
“The companies said flexible working conditions would be a better prospect for workers than that of companies’ closing down, which will deprive workers of jobs and income,” Basilio said. “But as a result, more full-time workers ended up doing temporary, informal work and overnight jobs without pay.”
“In effect, workers end up with less take home pay and are very much exploited,” he said.
According to the 2008-2009 data of the independent think-tank Ibon, 66 per cent of the country’s 38 million workers are contractual.
Of the 32,000 agricultural workers in Compostela Valley and Davao del Norte in 2004, almost 20,000 thousand or 62.5 per cent were contractual.
Basilio said the figure must have increased by now.
The number of unemployed people in the country has also increased from 6.8 percent in 2008 to 7.1 percent in 2009 to 2.7 million, according to the National Economic Development Agency (Neda). But Ibon said the Neda figures did not include those who stopped looking for jobs because of hopelessness. Ibon said the number of unemployed people in the country could easily reach 4.32 million for the same period.
Basilio said that under the Arroyo administration, workers across the country have filed 158 cases of economic rights violations which included violation of minimum wage, failure to grant workers of work leaves and benefits and failure to comply with the collective bargaining agreements.
Basilio said that union busting and harassment against workers and their leaders have also worsened under Arroyo. He said 93 workers and labor leaders have been killed since 2001.
Over a thousand workers from different provinces in the Davao Region joined the KMU rally at the Rizal Park to observe the 124th International Labor Day. ( Grace S. Uddin/davaotoday.com/
