The Department of Labour and Employment (DoLE) called on telecommunications giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co (PLDT), to regularise more than 7,000 workers and pay them P51.6mn monetary benefits.
Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello made the appeal amid the firm’s continued refusal to implement his department’s order.
Instead of regularising the workers, PLDT terminated its service contracts.
“It is now final and executory,” Bello said, referring to the resolution he signed on January 10, 2018, that denied with finality the appeal of PLDT to the department’s resolution directing the telecommunications giant and its contractors to regularise the more than 7,306 workers.
“Definitely it is wrong to terminate their workers. (PLDT) has to comply with the order and regularise their workers from its contractors,” the Labour chief said.
Even if the contract between PLDT and its service contractors are terminated, he said the workers should be regularised and their contractors blacklisted.
“The order is to regularise all of more than 7,000 workers which were outsourced by the contractors because they are found to be labour-only contractors. The job, work or services of the workers are necessary and desirable to the business of PLDT, hence they should not be outsourced,” Bello said.
“I told them already to propose their regularisation plan and submit it to us. We are willing to consider. I’m sure that PLDT is also a law-abiding company. We will have a meeting with them to clear the legal extent of the order,” he added.
Silvestre Bello: keen to implement department’s order
