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Legitimate job contracting
Legitimate job contracting is a permitted contracting arrangement where the contractor is an independent employer that performs a defined job with its own capital and control, rather than handing you a body.
Also called permissible contracting
How it works
The contractor has tools, supervisors, and statutory files in its own name. The service agreement describes a job or undertaking, not a person-shaped hole in your org chart. You buy a result. They decide the method, except as to the output you specified. Workers are their employees. If one quits, they restaff the job unless you contracted a named person, which starts to look like something else. DOLE registration helps the presumption. Facts still win.
Example: a Philippine firm runs your overnight ticket queue under a service agreement with a 60-second first-response clause. They employ twelve agents, remit SSS, and swap people when someone resigns. You never meet the Tuesday night agent. That can be legitimate job contracting. Naming Ana in the agreement and directing her hour by hour is closer to managed employment or to labor-only, depending on who actually employs her.
How it differs
Labor-only contracting is the prohibited thin version. A dedicated hire is one named employee, yours or an EOR’s. BPO delivery at scale is often this model when the vendor is real.
Common errors
Writing ‘job contracting’ on a header and then listing your standup times for each named worker. Skipping capital because the vendor ‘has been around.’
In practice
Treat Legitimate job contracting as a week-one operating object. Ask who signs the notice, who remits, and who would answer DOLE. If three vendors each point at the other, you have a story rather than a file. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have legitimate job contracting yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.