ISSUE
ANALYSIS No. 15
Series of 2008
Labor
Migration: A Dangerous Doctrine
The
more the economy is stagnant, the less its ability to create jobs,
the more dependent government becomes on overseas labor deployment.
By
the Policy Study, Publication and Advocacy (PSPA) Program
Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)
November 3, 2008
If
the state policy making and legislative agenda do not change course,
the whole nation will wake up one day to find that remittances accumulated
through off-shore migration or labor exportation have become government’s
No. 1 pillar of economic sustainability. Right now, foreign trade
and investment – steered by neo-liberal globalization –
and reliance on overseas development assistance are the first two
pillars, followed by the export of Filipino labor. The state policy
of globalization as specified by privatization, liberalization,
deregulation, and labor-only contracting binds the three major pillars
together.
Labor
migration has become the safety valve to the country’s unemployment
crisis and a major source of foreign exchange: It has surged way
past the domestic job market as the remaining option for many Filipinos.
In 2000 alone, more than 800,000 Filipinos were deployed abroad
while only less than 200,000 were effectively added to the domestic
labor market.(1) As
unemployment has worsened under the Arroyo administration compared
to the past 50 years some 3,000 Filipinos leave the country every
day for overseas jobs – or a total of more than 1 million
every year. With remittances growing by the year - $14.4 billion
in 2007 constituting 10 percent of the country’s GDP - the
government target is to increase labor migration to 2 million by
2010.(2) And the government
is determined to meet the target: From January to April this year
there were 516,466 migrant workers deployed thus raising the daily
departure to 4,314 from last year’s 3,000.
In
fact remittances sent by overseas Filipinos have outstripped both
foreign direct investment (FDI) and overseas development assistance
(ODA) which have declined in the past several years. FDI was $2.93
billion in 2007 but minus payments to loans the actual investment
inflows fell by 69.3 percent to only $341 million. Last year’s
$14.4 billion remittances is equal to 25 percent of the total ODA
received by the Philippines – that is, in 20 years or from
1986-2006 ($39.9 billion).
In
general, last year global foreign remittances already totaled thrice
the amount of aid given by donor countries to developing nations:
$300 billion against $104 billion. No wonder labor migration is
now being trumpeted by the United Nations and other multilateral
organizations as a centerpiece program for developing economies.
For
a government whose economic policy is subordinated to bitter policy
prescriptions of the IMF and WB and adherence to the World Trade
Organization (WTO), the Arroyo regime’s agenda to make labor
migration as a major source of government income received a boost
from no less than UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Speaking before
the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) on Oct. 29
in Manila, Ban Ki-moon, who is also South Korea’s former foreign
minister, hailed migration as “a tool to help lift us out
the (current global) economic crisis …(where) countries can
draw the greatest possible development benefits.”
A
model for migration
Organizers
of GFMD chose Manila as the forum venue on account of the Philippines’
being a role model for labor migration among developing countries
and chiefly because of the remittances accruing from foreign employment.
Of some 8.2 million Filipinos(3)
living and working in more than 193 countries/territories around
the world, 43 percent are permanent immigrants while the rest or
4.7 million are temporary or contract workers. The Philippines is
one of the leading sources of migrant labor in the world market.
But it tops in the deployment of caregivers and domestics, 90 percent
of them women, as well as in nurses, seafarers (30 percent of the
world supply), and other medical workers and professionals.
Hypocritically
since the Marcos years, the government denies the existence of a
labor export policy. What it cannot hide however is the existence
of a government infrastructure developed since the Marcos years
that gives prime attention to the export of Filipino workers and
professionals. This infrastructure promotes and processes out-migration,
exacts – extorts, if you will - various exorbitant fees from
outgoing OFWs, accredits recruitment agencies, provides skills training
and immigration lectures, and supposedly earmarks benefits for the
migrant workers and their families. This bureaucracy, which is headed
by the President, includes the labor department’s Philippine
Overseas Employment Agency (POEA), Overseas Workers Welfare Administration
(OWWA), the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC), Technical
Education and Skills Authority (TESDA), and the Department of Foreign
Affairs (DFA) with its office of migrant affairs and various Philippine
Labor Offices (POLOS) based in many countries.
The
government also sends several high-level missions every year to
market Filipino labor abroad while job fairs for overseas employment
are constantly held at home. Before it hosted the GFMD, Arroyo officials
joined the first annual Transatlantic Forum on Migration and Integration
(TFMI) held last July in Germany. Last month, President Gloria M.
Arroyo signed into law the controversial Japan Philippine Economic
Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) which increases the number of Filipino
nurses and caregivers deployable to Japan in exchange for relaxing
restrictions to the latter’s exports and investments in the
country.
No
domestic economy
The
promotion of labor out-migration is driven by the fact that the
country does not have a viable domestic economy to speak of –
an economy that generates adequate jobs to its people. Despite government
land reform, 70 percent of agricultural land remains in the hands
of landlords leaving the country’s millions of farmers unproductive
and without a stable income. Instead of basic industries, what the
country has are globally-integrated assembly lines or repackaging
plants that exploit labor with low wages and lack of job security
because of government’s labor contracting policy.
Moreover,
labor wages are frozen low in order to attract foreign investment.
It is the same policy that government promotes abroad to market
Filipino skills in the form of caregivers, construction workers,
and other workers. Filipino seafarers are preferred by international
shipping companies because the government tolerates the low wages
paid them even if monthly benchmark salaries are higher.
Attribute
all these to government’s adherence to neo-colonial and now
neo-liberal policies which open the country’s weak economy
to unrestricted foreign trade and investment threatening not only
the productive livelihoods of many Filipinos but also resulting
in the shutdown of small industries. Neo-liberal policies exacerbate
poverty and unemployment and are generally counter-productive in
terms of building a self-sustaining economy and giving jobs.
Epic
proportions
With
some 4 million jobless Filipinos and another 12 percent underemployed,
unemployment under Arroyo has worsened – in epic proportions
since the last 50 years. Thus out-migration is a safety valve to
the unemployed, including thousands of professionals – the
last exit from a country that is about to implode in a social unrest.
Labor out-migration has also become a political tool of sorts used
by the regime to arrest a growing restlessness – if not discontent
– among the people against a corrupt and weak government for
its inability to provide jobs and a better future for its people.
Yet while its economic management increasingly relies on foreign
remittances the government has not seriously taken steps to safeguard
the rights of OFWs and improve their labor conditions. For instance,
of 193 destination countries for Filipino workers the country has
only a handful of bilateral labor agreements.
The
more the economy is stagnant, the less its ability to create jobs,
the more dependent government becomes on overseas labor deployment.
What government cannot provide it sells in the world market to help
sustain the economies of advanced countries - that bear constant
crisis anyway - and the domestic needs of their ageing populations.
But this is dangerous, and not only because even before the government
would take this extreme option the whole economy would have collapsed.
It will erode the urgency for drastic policy reform and new governance
and it will calm the people into complacency and defeatism. Or it
can be used by the government to evade comprehensive policy reform
that would make the economy more responsive to the basic social
and economic rights of the people.
But
in the first place what can we expect from a government that persists
in the doctrine established by previous regimes embedding economic
policies to global, transnational business perspectives? Instructive
at this point is a critique of the GFMD by the parallel International
Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR)(4)
last week: The GFMD and the UN secretary general’s pro-migration
declaration “arose in the midst of the worsening world economic
crisis – where far more advanced…countries are fighting
their way out of this crisis even as they retain their…control
and power, while poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment continue
to aggravate the lives of peoples of Third World countries.”
__________________________________________
End
notes
(1) S.P. Go, “Remittances and International Labor Migration:
Impact on the Philippines,” Metropolis Inter-Conference Seminar
on Immigration and Homeland, May 9-12, 2002, Dubrovnik.
(2) Migrant labor remittances do not include those brought home
directly by vacationing Filipinos or by door-to-door transactions,
thus the total remittances could be more. In 2007, it is estimated
to be as much as $18 billion.
(3) According to the government Commission on Filipino Overseas
(CFO, 2008). Other estimates put the number at 10 million in nearly
197 countries.
(4) Held also in Manila on Oct. 28-30, 2008, the IAMR was organized
by Migrante International together with the International Migrants
Alliance (IMA), IBON Foundation, and other groups.
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