Short answer. Three groups. Article 18 exempts members of the diplomatic corps, international organisations, and such other employers as may be allowed by the Secretary of Labor. The third is open-ended by design: it operates only where the Secretary has allowed it, so no employer can simply place itself there.
What the law says
Direct-hiring by members of the diplomatic corps, international organizations and such other employers as may be allowed by the Secretary of Labor is exempted from this provision.
Labor Code, Article 18 — Ban On Direct Hiring. Read the full provision →
The list as the Code writes it
The exemption reads: Direct-hiring by members of the diplomatic corps, international organizations and such other employers as may be allowed by the Secretary of Labor is exempted from this provision. Two of the three are described by what the employer is. The third is described by what has been done about the employer. That asymmetry is the whole point of the sentence, and it is the part most commonly misread by workers who have been told that their prospective employer is a special case and therefore need not use the ordinary channel.
Why the third category is a permission, not a status
Such other employers as may be allowed is a delegation. It lets the Secretary of Labor add to the list where the circumstances warrant it, and it means that being unusual, prestigious, foreign or long-established gives an employer nothing on its own. Until the allowance exists, the employer sits under the general ban with everybody else. Practically, that reverses the burden of the conversation: the right question is not whether an employer seems like the sort that should be exempt, but whether it has actually been allowed to hire directly.
What the exemption releases the employer from
It is an exemption from this provision — that is, from the requirement to hire through the Boards and entities the Secretary authorises. It says nothing about the rest of the employment relationship, and it does not turn the arrangement into one the Code takes no interest in. Reading the exemption as a general release is where workers get into difficulty: they accept that the hiring may lawfully be direct, and then also accept that nothing else about the placement needs documenting, which does not follow from the sentence at all.
When somebody tells you the ban does not apply
Ask which of the three limbs is being claimed, and ask it plainly. A mission or an international organisation can identify itself; an employer relying on the third limb should be able to say what permits it. If the answer is vague, or if the exemption is being explained by an intermediary rather than by the employer, treat that as the thing to resolve before money or documents change hands. Keep the correspondence in which the claim was made — it is often the most useful single document later.