Last Monday, March 11, 2024, 64 casual, project-based employees and field workers of the First Catanduanes Electric Cooperative, Inc. (FICELCO) became regular employees of the cooperative.
This came after three mandatory conferences held by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) following a finding by labor inspector last Feb. 6 that the cooperative did not comply with the regularization of its hired contractual laborers.
Majority of the 64 workers who were present during the conference at the Virac Sports Center agreed to become regular employees with security of tenure rather than be separated from their employer with only their separation pay to tide them over the next few months.
As explained by the cooperative management, the 64 will be considered non-plantilla regular employees, as their positions are not included in the plantilla approved by the National Electrification Administration (NEA).
Under the NEA guidelines, the number of plantilla positions in an electric cooperative depends on the total number of member-consumers it serves in the grid.
As the number of member-consumers increase, so will the number of plantilla positions allowed in the cooperative.
The 64 new regular employees will enjoy only the basic benefits mandated by the government such as the five-day leave, PhilHealth, SSS, Pag-IBIG and 13th month pay.
Only when they are qualified and hired as plantilla employees do they get the extra benefits granted to current FICELCO employees under a Collective Bargaining Agreement.
For majority of them, this favorable development removed the anxiety they felt every time their project contracts expire, fearing that their employment would not be renewed.
To be clear, this situation has been existing since the early 1990s when the cooperative, constrained by the limited plantilla positions, began hiring contractual employees on a per-project basis.
This continued over the last three decades until that text message on the contractuals’ situation reached the DOLE hotline and prompted the inspection.
The DOLE regional office and FICELCO management as well should be commended for helping remove the 64 individuals from the ranks of the nearly seven million Filipino workers who are underemployed.
But more work needs to be done.
According to the latest labor force statistics from the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA) as of January 2023, nearly half (49.9%) of the underemployed persons in the country worked in the Services sector, with Agriculture (32.2%) and Industry (17.8%) accounting for the balance.
These service workers are most likely employed by private companies engaged in wholesale and retail businesses while those in Industry are possibly construction workers who are paid on a daily basis and hired only when there is a project.
Most of them are unskilled and subsisting on the minimum daily wage of P395, which for about six days a week comes up to less than P10,000 monthly, with the mandatory deductions still to be removed.
This is just enough to feed a family of five, as the PSA estimates such a family needs to have an income of P8,739 per month to meet basic food needs.
And the PSA list of sectors, where the underemployed can be found, does not even include the biggest contractualization violator of them all: the government.
In Catanduanes alone, there a few thousand individuals who are laboring in the local government units on a job-order or contract of service basis.
Some serve for just three to six months, hired only on the basis of political connections rather than skill, to be replaced by another set once their contracts expire.
But there are a number in the different departments and offices who have been with the LGUs for years already and have not been regularized or absorbed into the organization.
When the DOLE and the LGUs would take time to address the plight of these underemployed workers remains to be seen.