“Endo” (end of contract), or the scheme of employers ending workers' contracts every five months which

was conceived to avoid regularization as mandated by labor laws for workers employed for six months,
can shape up to be a thorny issue for the Duterte administration.

ent efforts by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to end “endo” or illegal
contractualization has not gained acceptance among labor groups that had been involved in more than
nine months of dialogues.

Despite the release of Department Order (DO) 174, or the Rules Implementing Articles 106-109 of the
Labor Code that allows employers to forge an agreement with contractors to do jobs that are not core to
the business operations, “endo” really has not been fully eliminated.

Clearly, this does not fulfill what the President had promised when he was campaigning and when he
assumed office.

DO 174 supercedes Department Order 18 (DO 18), which spelled out the original rules of labor
contracting. DO 174 now categorically prohibits the continuous hiring by a manning agency of a worker
under a repeated contract of short duration.

However, it is still legal for manpower supply companies to enter into labor contracting agencies with
bigger companies as long as the workers they send are employed full-time with them and enjoying the
required benefits stipulated by law.