A workers’ group has urged the Department of Labor and Employment to assess and monitor the country’s biggest workers’ cooperative which deploys more than 30,000 contractual workers in the country as part of the government’s promise to end contractualization in private establishments.
The Partido ng Manggagawa said that more than 5,000 contractors are to be assessed this year by the DoLE and asked the department to put Asiapro Multi-Purpose Cooperative on top of its list.
“Asiapro Multi-Purpose Cooperative, according to its website, deploys between 33,000 to 35,000 workers in more than 200 clients, among them multinational agribusiness firms Dole and Del Monte in Mindanao,” according to Rene Magtubo, PM national chairman.
“Moreover, Asiapro’s ‘worker co-op’ model has been an object of controversy and has been the subject of legal cases and labor disputes. We urge the DoLE to seriously investigate if Asiapro complies with existing laws and regulations, especifically the prohibited practice of labor-only contracting,” he said.
Magtubo added that “It boggles the mind that one cooperative can have the expertise and the tools to engage in a full spectrum of businesses from agribusiness to real estate to manufacturing to merchandising and retail, and even mining. Only in the Philippines!”
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello earlier said that the DoLE’s initial target was 5,150 registered subcontractors and their 26,194 principals.
“Of the 416,343 workers deployed by contractors, Asiapro alone accounts for almost 10 percent of the deployment of contractual workers,” Magtubo said.
