Government should stop hurting the economy and the workers

In times of extreme difficulties, when thousands of small, micro, and medium-scale companies are closing, and millions have already lost their jobs, the government must come up with emergency measures to save both employers and employees. These are extraordinary times that call for extraordinary solutions. Government officials should take decisive actions and should not shirk from their duty to serve the people.

Prices of commodities are soaring to unprecedented heights. The value of money is diving to unprecedented depths. The government is overwhelmed by foreign and domestic debts. The dollar remittances by Overseas Filipino Workers have significantly gone down. Millions have lost their jobs. The lives of the poor are under serious and actual dangers brought about not just by the COVID-19 health crisis but also by the sharp economic downturn. The workers have no jobs, they lost their means of livelihood. They have no savings to tide them over during this grave emergency. Dole-outs from the government are not sustainable. The government is also poor.

Given this gloom and doom, the government should act with a sense of urgency. And if it has no readily-available solutions then, at the very least, government agencies should not undertake measures that exacerbate the sufferings of both the business sectors and the working class. For instance, the Department of Labor and Employment should call for a moratorium of these nasty factory inspections and should stop inspectors from disturbing the industrial peace in the workplace. People are working peacefully in the companies, then come the inspectors. After talking to one or two workers, they make sweeping findings that condemn both principal employers and legitimate contractors as being engaged in labor-only contracting. Then, they order principal employers to absorb bona-fide employees of agencies as regular personnel.

Instead of saving small firms and micro enterprises, these highly-biased inspectors destroy jobs by pushing small principals to the brink of bankruptcy. The DOLE should focus on its first responsibility which is to bring about an environment that creates and preserves jobs, they force firms to close by issuing decisions that are way beyond the employers' capacity to pay. Government should not destroy small companies and eliminate available work by making mountains out of molehills. They should help small enterprises to grow, instead of snuffing out their chances of survival. This crisis underscores the need for temporary stoppage of the so-called visitorial power of the secretary of DOLE. Government should learn to trust the employers. They too, on their own, know how to care for their own workers.

DOLE Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III is a good man, and one who understands the far-reaching implications of all these. There is a need for an emergency measure to save both employers and employees. If government should be the proximate cause of exacerbating the economic crises, then it is not only lacking in relevance and responsibility. It becomes a burden to both capital and the working class. It is not enough that they give dole-outs in amounts that can hardly be sufficient over the extended period of the economic crisis. They should put a stop to actions that further complicate and make heavier the burdens being carried by the poor. Government should stop increasing contributions to SSS, PhilHealth, and other impositions. They are trying to draw blood from stones.

If the government cannot help the poor at the most difficult times of their sufferings, then it should, at the very least, avoid adding to the pains suffered by the masses. The economy is already down and gasping for breath. The government should not finish it off with unnecessary blows. That is cruel and unusual punishment, adding more injuries to someone who is mortally wounded.