Jollibee regularizing more employees but Bello “not completely happy”

December 27, 2018

Jollibee Foods Corp. is still the number one company who are involved in contractualization, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said on Thursday.

"Number one is Jollibee... In fairness, Jollibee is now regularizing but I am not completely happy because their regularization program is small," said Bello in a press briefing in Malacanang.

"I told them 'please up your ante'. They're offering to regularize 3,000 a year I said that's not enough," Bello said.

  According to the labor secretary, Jollibee will study the SM malls regularization program where the latter turned out 10,000 regular employees a year.

  Bello said Philippine Airlines and Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company remained "hardheaded".

  "They went to court. We can't do anything. (But) I'm confident that eventually, we will win the case," he said.

  Bello then praised Dole Philippines for immediately coming up with a memorandum of agreement with their labor force to regularize their employees.

  Bello said as of September this year, around 411,000 contractual employees are regularized.

  "What is more impressive or amazing is that of the 411,000 contractuals who were regularized, they became regular employees through voluntary regularization. Only more or less 30 percent of the regularized employees were regularized as a result of an order, compliance order from the Department of Labor," he said.

  He said they will not yet file cases against those companies who failed to comply with President Rodrigo Duterte's regularization order. "We will issue compliance orders," he added.

  Bello said this is one of the "major accomplishments" of the Duterte administration. Ella Dionisio/DMS