Home⇛Bisig⇛vol. 3 no. 1 (2021)

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Rodrigo Duterte’s Language on Endo and Labor Unionism

Jervy C. Briones

Discipline: Politics, Development Studies

 

Abstract:

Rodrigo Duterte, back in his presidential campaign in 2016, promised to end endo or contractualization. It is a labor practice in the Philippines where companies temporarily employ workers not exceeding six months otherwise regularization comes that obligates employers to pay workers’ benefits. With less than a year remaining in his term as president, endo continues affecting millions of Filipino workers as ending it is no longer a priority of his government. Since taking power, Duterte gave numerous speeches and interviews on some labor issues, such as endo and unionism. Interestingly, his perspective had shifted significantly from being a working class hero to a status quo defender characterized by his red-tagging of labor unions that he sees as communist ‘fronts’ and his refusal to end endo to seek a so-called balance between labor and capital. In this study, I considered the spoken and written discourse of Duterte on contractualization and unionism which can be found online in the websites of different news agencies and the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO). The text and talk then were analyzed through the lenses of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), specifically the socio-cognitive approach by Teun van Dijk. The results show that Duterte’s discourse on labor issues exemplifies power and ideology and reinforces social representations against labor unionism.



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