REP. Lex Colada (PL, AAMBIS-OWA) yesterday called for a congressional inquiry into Shopee Philippines’ labor dispute with its truck drivers who accused the popular online shopping platform of illegally preventing them from forming a union.
Colada said that despite its huge profits from the popularity of online shopping and delivery services in the country, the leading digital marketplace “has turned its back from taking good care of its truck drivers.”
The party-list lawmaker said the inquiry should focus on the Singapore-based multinational e-commerce giant’s act of denying truck drivers their right to organize themselves into a union in the past two years.
He particularly wants Jan Frederic Chiong, Shopee Philippines’ chairman, to face the inquiry, noting that he also holds a 60-percent stake in the logistics affiliate SPX Express Philippines more popularly known as Shopee Express. The two firms are both subsidiaries of Shopee’s parent firm, the Sea Group of Singapore.
“Shopee has managed to skirt the labor issue by citing the non-existence of a direct employer-employee relationship with its pool of truck drivers. But this is unfair to the hundreds of drivers who bear the heat of the sun to transport the bulk of goods purchased on the Shopee platform,” Colada said.
Colada recalled that about 257 drivers based in Shopee’s Parañaque hub earlier filed a petition for direct certification election, for purposes of collective bargaining.
He said the drivers, who regularly transport products for SPX Philippines but have yet to enjoy regularization, “wanted to form a union in order to protect their labor rights, specifically to ensure proper wages as well as work hours.”
The lawmaker said Shopee’s management had prevented the formation of a union among these drivers over claims that they were not direct employees.
“Shopee has likewise claimed that SPX truck drivers were supposedly employed by its 22 contractors and sub-contractors nationwide,” he said.
However, Colada said the drivers insist that “SPX actually employs them as the trucks they drive belonged to Shopee, based on official documents and records.”
These trucks were also being deployed and dispatched under SPX’s dispatching authority, hence they solely controlled, mobilized and supervised by SPX, the lawmaker pointed out.
Colada said Shopee and SPX need to take care of their truck drivers and let them unionize but the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) affirmed the order of a labor mediator and arbiter who earlier reversed the earlier order allowing the establishment of a union after Shopee’s management filed a motion for reconsideration.
“It should be Shopee that must be up to the task of promoting the truck workers’ welfare and respecting their right to form a union, under our country’s labor laws. Not even a foreign firm can evade this responsibility,” Colada said.
