Villanueva refiles anti-endo bill after Duterte’s veto

Senator Joel Villanueva has refiled the anti-endo measure or the Security of Tenure Bill that President Rodrigo Duterte decided to veto despite being certified as urgent in the 17th Congress.

Ending contractualization was also one of the bold promises Duterte made when he was running for president in 2016.

"We lament the veto of the Security of Tenure Bill on account of wrong assumptions used in justifying its veto," Villanueva said.

"Despite this setback, however, we believe that the fight goes on," he added.

Duterte vetoed the bill which sought to outlaw labor-only contracting on Friday.

The vetoed measure defined labor-only contracting as"

• when the job contractor merely supplies workers to a contractee;
• when the workers supplied by the contractor are performing jobs which are directly related to the principal business of the contractee; and 
• when the job contractor does not control the workers deployed.

"The definition was favorably endorsed by the Department of Labor and Employment... who, we assume, knows the loopholes in the law that must be addressed by corrective legislation," Duterte said.

"Unfortunately, while the bill contains the same definition in the bill certified as urgent by the President, the President, upon the advise of his ill-informed advisers chose to veto the bill," he added. 

Malacañang on Friday rejected allegations that Duterte reneged on his promise to end labor-only contracting in the country.

“The authors of the Security of Tenure (SOT) bill, as well as the members of both houses of Congress, should not be crestfallen and disappointed nor should the labor sector feel saddened and betrayed by the President’s veto of the SOT bill,” presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement.

“While the President has vetoed the enrolled bill which attempts to strengthen the security of tenure of our workers, his promise to end unfair practices of contractualization, such as labor-only contracting and end-of-contract (endo) schemes, remains and will be pursued, if not soonest, still within the term of the President.”

Even without a law, Panelo said Duterte issued Executive Order 51 on Labor Day last year which prohibits the illegal contracting and sub-contracting of workers. —NB, GMA News