MORE THAN 300,000 workers have been regularized this year, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) reported on Monday, citing its efforts as well as voluntary regulation by employers.
“Now as we speak, actually as of last week, meron na kaming na-regular na (we already regularized) 312,000 workers in the private sector,” Labor Assistant Secretary Benjo Santos M. Benavidez said in a press briefing, adding that, “Ang malaking bahagdan doon ay ang 2018.” (The big percentage [of regularized workers] is in 2018).
Mr. Benavidez said 228,000 of the 312,000 workers were regularized voluntarily by their employers and/or principals while 84,000 workers were regularized in the course of DoLE’s inspections of various establishments.
“Nakatulong talaga ang paglabas ng listahan (It really helped that we released that list),” Mr. Benavidez said regarding the list of 3,377 companies involved in labor-only contracting that DoLE released last May.
In that list, 2,610 are “suspected to be engaged in labor-only contracting” while 767 are “found to be engaged in labor-only contracting.” DoLE also said there was a total of 224,852 affected workers among the enterprises in the list.
Mr. Benavidez disclosed further that DoLE has inspected 52,000 establishments, and has until the end of this month to inspect the remaining 3,000.
The official added, “Ang pagtatapos ng aming inspection ay Nov. 29 so in a week’s time, kailangan namin mag-produce ng [panibagong] listahan ng mga companies engaged sa labor-only contracting.” (The end of our inspections is Nov. 29 so in a week’s time, we need to produce a [new] list of companies engaged in labor-only contracting). — Gillian M. Cortez

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