Labor NGO Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) condemns multinational soft drink giant Coca-Cola Company and its Philippines branch Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines for laying off 200 contractual workers in its Cebu operations after the Labor Department ordered their regularization.

More than 200 contractual Coke workers, many of whom have been employed in the company for 12-17 years, face retrenchment in February 2025. Coke cites as reason the termination of its contract with its current manpower agency Exel-Tech Manpower and Services Incorporated and its new contract with manpower agency Xisco.

The termination comes in the wake of a Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) order regularizing the workers. All members of the Progressive Workers Association in Exeltech and Manpower Services Incorporated – Coca-cola Cebu (PWAETMSICC), an affiliate of Ilaw at Buklod ng Manggagawa (IBM), a federation of national labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), are among those who will be terminated.

CTUHR vehemently condemns Coke for announcing the retrenchment of 200 of its workforce. Coke’s layoff of its workers is a clear violation of workers’ rights to security of tenure and to unionize and collectively bargain, which are enshrined in the country’s laws. The government should uphold the rights of Coke workers, the country’s laws, and the DOLE’s ruling on the workers’ case.

While Coke has faced stiff competition in recent years, it continues to enjoy good market standing. By retrenching 200 workers in Cebu, it is displaying nothing less than naked corporate greed, which has hurt its public reputation more than its product’s effects on people’s health.

The Coke workers’ retrenchment is yet another case study of problems in the country’s laws on contractualization. On the one hand, the country’s Constitution and Labor Code, and DOLE Order No. 174 Series of 2017 all affirm workers’ rights to regularization and unionization. On the other hand, by mandating regularization under manpower agencies, DOLE Order 174 makes workers vulnerable to the wholesale violation of their rights – as the main employer can simply cite “end of contract” with manpower agencies to retrench workers.

The Coke workers’ case shows that regularization can become a signal to retrenchment. We demand that the DOLE, and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr himself, ensure that retrenchment from work will not be the fate of the 200 Coke workers, and that contractualization in the country is ended. The 200 Coke workers should be regularized and their union should be recognized; they should not be removed from work.

One of the first thing one sees in Coke Philippines’ website is “Doing business the right way.” Implementing large-scale contractualization is in the first place not doing business the right way. It implies a wholesale violation of workers’ rights to a living wage, security of tenure, right to unionize and collectively bargain, among others. It is reprehensible that when workers fight to attain their rights, they face greater violation of their rights, including their removal from their jobs.