SALIGAN’s Position on the Draft Substitute Bill (BPO Workers Protection Act)
SALIGAN (Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panligal) reaffirms its commitment to the rights of BPO workers to decent work, which encompasses a living wage, security of tenure, and freedom of association. We thus commend the House of Representatives for the consolidation of House Bills Nos. 7588, 5607, 5166, 4024, and 502 into the Draft Substitute Bill, now known as the “BPO Workers Protection Act”. While we welcome the consolidation of the five House Bills into a consolidated substitute bill, we find that the current draft lacks the specificity required to provide full protection to labor as mandated by the 1987 Constitution.
We submit the following positions based on our core principles:
On Living Wage
We believe that all workers deserve a living wage backed by data on the actual cost of living, rather than a mere minimum wage. The Substitute Bill, while it mandates that wages must not be lower than the applicable minimum wage, it regresses from the “living wage” standard originally proposed in HB 5166 and HB 5607.
We support HB 5166’s proposal of an entry-level salary of ₱36,000 that will be adjusted based on current data on cost of living. We urge the committee to reinstate the living wage standard to ensure that this bill provides a truly decent life for BPO workers.
On Security of Tenure
We believe that workers must be protected against the misuse of floating status, which is often used to avoid regularization. We support the Substitute Bill as it limits temporary suspension of employment to 6 months and grants regular status after the probationary period.
To fully protect workers’ security of tenure, we propose that the Bill also include the 12% interest penalty on back wages for workers found to be unjustly dismissed as proposed in HB 4024 and HB 7588.
We also propose an additional requirement that employers must provide monthly written updates to employees placed on floating status regarding potential account vacancies to prevent constructive dismissal.
On Freedom of Association
We believe that workers must be free to organize without interference. A critical component of this is protection from red-tagging (labeling union members as subversives). The Substitute Bill guarantees the right to self-organization, but it omits the explicit ban on red-tagging found in HB 5166.
We urge the committee to reinstate the provision prohibiting the tagging of any employee as “communist”, “terrorist”, or “subversive”. Freedom of association is hollow if exercising it puts a worker’s life and liberty at risk.
On Occupational Safety and Health and Mental Health
We maintain that BPO workers must have institutionalized OSH rights that reflect the unique stressors of the industry.
The Substitute Bill mandates measures to promote mental health and well-being, including access to support services and confidential referral mechanisms. However, we call for mandatory, not just “encouraged”, mental health support services. Additionally, we recommend the incorporation of HB 5166’s proposal for a resident psychologist available 24/7 given the high-pressure environment and exposure to stressful or obscene content.
The Substitute Bill also “encourages” employers to provide hazard pay, we insist that this must also be mandatory. We urge the committee to adopt the 30% tax-free hazard pay for inclement weather and the ₱100.00 daily emergency subsidy during national emergencies proposed in HB 5166.
The Substitute Bill is currently silent on the right to refuse work during calamities. We urge that the committee add a provision making work voluntary during heavy rain or other instances of inclement weather conditions and automatically suspended in cases of typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruption, fire, and other such states of calamity (HB 5166).
On Humane Working Activities and Dignity
For employees to feel respected and dignified at work, protections must be explicit rather than discretionary. We support the Substitute Bills provision which mandates employers to treat workers in a just and humane manner and explicitly prohibits abusive language and physical violence.
We also support the provision on Data Privacy and Electronic Monitoring which requires electronic monitoring to be proportionate and work-related and not unduly intrusive.
The Substitute Bill also provides that there shall be no understaffing or overloading. We further assert that employee consent must be required for extra tasks, and these tasks must be duly compensated by the employer with an additional pay of not less than 30% of the regular rate per hour (HB 5166).
We also urge the committee to reinstate HB 5166’s explicit provision on the prohibition of any practice of mandatory overtime, delayed breaks, shortened workweek, multiple job assignments without additional compensation, and other forms of unregulated adjustments on working conditions.
Lastly, the Substitute Bill mentions “reasonable access” to restroom breaks but qualifies it by stating that they must not “unduly [disrupt] business operations”. This qualification creates a loophole for employers to delay essential breaks. We urge the committee to adopt the proposals of HB 4024, HB 5166, HB 5607, and HB 7588 on fixed restroom break durations, specifically the standard of five-minute (minimum) breaks for every two-hour interval (or a cumulative 20 minutes) to prevent the practice of delayed breaks.
On Non-Discrimination and Gender Equality
We believe that labor rights must capture women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights through the intersection of labor and gender. We commend the Substitute Bill for recognizing the Safe Spaces Act and protecting against retaliation for reporting. To further strengthen this, we recommend that the Bill explicitly mandate anonymous reporting mechanisms and the establishment of Safe Spaces committees in every BPO workplace to ensure that these protections are not merely theoretical.
SALIGAN supports the passage of the BPO Workers Protection Act, provided it adopts the specific standards mentioned above to prevent the “generalization” of rights. Finally, we recommend that a mandatory labor rights seminar be required for all existing and new hires upon the Bill’s enactment. The success of the BPO industry must not come at the expense of worker dignity.