PLDT decries DOLE ‘clarificatory order’ to regularize workers

Telecommunications giant PLDT Inc. is disputing a clarificatory order issued by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) for the telco to regularize contractual workers.

The DOLE order was “irregularly issued, procedurally inappropriate, based on selective and/or biased information, and vague,” the telco said in a regulatory filing submitted by senior vice president and corporate secretary Lourdes Rausa-Chan.

On July 11, the Labor department issued a clarificatory order stating that an earlier order on April 24, 2018 to regularize more than 7,000 employees and more than 30 PLDT contractors to cease and desist from doing labor contracting was “not subject to any condition.”

The department warned PLDT that “any act or condition imposed that frustrates or tends to frustrate the order to regularize is contumacious and shall be dealt with in accordance with law.”

The clarificatory order was issued on the heels of a PLDT statement saying that stopping its sub-contracting activities will shut down its labor contractors with thousands of workers losing jobs.

“If this is the conclusion of the Clarificatory Order or this Honorable Office, then with due respect it is wrong. PLDT has not taken any act to ‘frustrate or tend to frustrate’ this Honorable Office’s regularization orders,” PLDT said in a manifestation submitted to the department.

The telco said it was taking “logical, reasonable, and necessary step in response to those regularization orders.”

PLDT noted the clarificatory order was issued without giving the company a chance to be properly heard as required by due process of law. 

“The Labor Secretary released the order immediately after he met with representatives of the PLDT labor union, the Manggagawa sa Komunikasyon sa Pilipinas (MKP) on July 11, 2018.  As it stated in an earlier Manifestation to the Office of the Labor Secretary on July 16, 2018, PLDT did not receive a notice calling it to such a meeting,” the telco said.

“Regretfully, because the Clarificatory Order was issued immediately after this meeting with the MKP, it cannot escape the impression that the Order is based entirely on a factual position advocated by the MKP which is … inaccurate and misleading.  In all candor, these circumstances also increase PLDT’s concern that it will not receive a fair hearing on this matter before this Honorable Office."

PLDT denied that it laid off employees that were the subjects of the ordered to regularize the telco’s workers.

The telco said it did not require affected workers to “apply” for employment, contrary labor groups claimed. 

“Unfortunately, PLDT has not been even asked by the Labor Secretary to explain its Intake Process,” it said.

“The Intake Process starts with the identification of the individual worker to determine first and foremost that he is on the regularization list enumerated by this Honorable Office, and second, to ascertain that the person presenting himself or herself as such is indeed the same person on the regularization list.”

The process requires workers to provide relevant information such as social security, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG and tax identification number details in line with data privacy law.

PLDT claimed that allegations regarding the intake process come from parties who have not take part in it or have a vested interest adverse to PLDT and therefore cannot serve as a reliable basis to conclude that the process should be stopped by the Labor department. 

“Any order finding PLDT liable for alleged ‘contumacious’ actions, if based on such defective evidence or factual bases, ‘is regretfully an unjust judgment’,” the telco further claimed.

PLDT said it reserves the right to take legal steps in assailing the clarificatory order. —Ted Cordero/VDS, GMA News