The university’s plans to regularize contractual employees remain hampered as the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has once again rejected UP’s proposal to create over 2,000 new and additional positions for the regularization of contractuals and for hiring of new employees.

Under the DBM’s budget proposal submitted last August 23 to Congress, UP’s portion of the budget for Personnel Services (PS), which funds the salaries and other benefits of UP employees, is set to receive P13.72 billion, P780 million more than the P12.94-billion allotment in 2021. This includes the funding for the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers, which will ensure that workers in health-related establishments are properly compensated and given due benefits such as hazard allowance.

But despite the increase from last year’s appropriations, this is still P1.8 billion short of UP’s proposed budget for 2022. The budget department did not allocate any funds for the creation of 2,007 new plantilla items across the UP system to regularize contractuals and hire new employees (see sidebar).

Jossel Ebesate, national president of All UP Workers Union (AUPWU), had already expected this move from the national government due to the sizable number of still unfilled positions in the university. UP has been proposing the creation of thousands of new items in at least the last 10 years, though these proposals have been repeatedly rejected by the DBM as the university still fails to fill all its existing plantilla positions.

Staffing Struggle

Per the 2021 staffing summary, the UP system still has over a thousand unfilled permanent positions, despite the new and additional programs offered and the expanding services of the university. Of the 14,378 authorized positions, only 13,101 are filled. The DBM requires the university to reduce the number of unfilled permanent positions to be granted new and additional items, Ebesate said.

“Tuloy-tuloy ang ating pakikipag-usap sa administration na dapat [punan] na talaga yung mga unfilled items,” said Ebesate. “Kung ayaw talaga [punan] ng isang constituent unit (CU) ang isang vacant item ay kunin nalang ‘yan ng system at ibigay doon sa mas nangangailangan na mga CU para [mapunan] kaagad at makakuha tayo ng additional items.” 

The usual process of filling up the empty positions has been slow as the bulk of the unfilled plantilla items are composed of low salary grade (SG) levels which are not attractive to qualified applicants, Vice President for Public Affairs Elena Pernia said in an email interview with the Collegian. Some required qualifications for the items are also high relative to the compensation that the workers will receive.

In 2017, the university had more than 2,000 unfilled items, which it planned to return to the DBM by February 1, 2018, so that the new and additional items with higher SG levels could be granted. However, the administration did not push this plan through after unions had objected.

“We objected because primarily our problem is understaffing and massive contractuals in spite of so many unfilled items,” Ebesate said. The union instead proposed for the administration to immediately fill the items with the existing roster of qualified contractuals.

However, while contractuals could meet the standards of the Civil Service Commission (CSC), they fall short of the qualifications required by the unit in need of filling up the item. Meanwhile, job-order (JO) and contract-of-service (COS) personnel or those considered as non-UP contractuals lack CSC career eligibility, one of the requirements for permanent employment in the government.

Reliance on Contractualization

The large number of unfilled positions goes to show how the university has heavily relied on COS hiring. The university has a total of 912 UP contractual personnel and 2,284 non-UP contractual personnel, based on the Personal Services Itemization and Plantilla of Personnel, as of June 30, 2021.

Non-UP contractuals do not benefit from an employer-employee relationship with the university, leaving their length of service and job security in limbo. Per a Commission on Audit and DBM joint circular, government agencies can only continue hiring and renewing JO and COS workers until December 31, 2022. Government contractualization was supposedly only up until December 2018 but was later extended until the end of 2022 in consideration of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In the meantime, the AUPWU has already asked the UP administration to convert non-UP contractuals to UP contractuals so they could at least receive some of the benefits regular employees receive, and so, more importantly, they can still be employed even after 2022. But the union’s call for the regularization of employees persists as the continuing contractualization leaves thousands of employees without job security.

“Yung bottomline pa rin talaga is dapat additional regular items ... [dahil] nasa balad lagi ng alanganin yung ating mga non-UP contractuals. Hindi nila alam kung at the end of their contract ay mayroon pa silang makukuha ulit na kontrata,” Ebesate said. ●