Thursday, January 7
Priscillia Lefebvre, CUPE 4600:
We visited two unforgettable places today signifying two distinct yet complimentary issues facing the Filipino labour force. The first was the trip to the Salam Mosque Compound, a Muslim community which serves as a temporary hold for females, as young as 14 years of age, who are preparing themselves to be sent overseas as domestic helpers. These workers are sent overseas to the Middle East alone, to places they have never been, to live with people they do not know, and who speak in languages they cannot speak. They are provided no recourse, no protection, and are in some cases not permitted to leave the home of their employer. They are effectively imprisoned and made to work for a meager wage.
Women migrate from Mindanao to Manila to wait for a job placement in the Middle East. Most women will work as domestic workers and housekeepers in countries with few labour rights.
We spoke to one girl preparing to leave for Saudi Arabia. She introduced herself as 23 years old even though she was only 18 (you must be at least 23 years old to qualify for work). She expressed eagerness to leave and work as this would provide her with the opportunity to provide the means that would allow her sister to finish school. Putting children through school is the number one reason why women go overseas to work and expose themselves to whims and demands of their employer, which could range from child care to rape and even death. To add to personal risk, there are social costs related to this type of employment situation. Filipina workers are deskilled as their professional training is not recognized outside of the country. For example, many skilled workers such as teachers end up working as nannies. However, most of the Muslim girls at the compound never get the chance to acquire such training in the first place.
Labour export has proven to be extremely profitable to the government and as such it is encouraged and unregulated to suit the needs of wealthier nations. There are many bureaucratic channels prospective workers must navigate and fees they must pay in order to secure a position overseas. They send substantial remittances back from abroad. These remittances boost the country’s dollar reserves, which enables the government to borrow funds from international lending institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the big transnational banks. As a result, the workers are seen as little more than export commodities – cheap to produce and highly replaceable.
"Your Vision is Our Slavery"
The afternoon led us to the picket lines of garment industry workers who had been on strike for 6 months and continue to guard the entrance of the factory from which they were laid off. The factory, owned by the capitalist multinational Triumph International Philippines Inc., closed its doors and its back on the over 1000 affected employees, many of whom had been serving the company for 30 years. These discarded workers were given no notice and no consideration when the company closed its doors in June of 2009. Since then, laid off workers have been blocking the company from underhandedly removing the means of production out of the factory here in the Philippines to areas of even cheaper labour and greater profit, such as Vietnam and China.
After observing the conditions the strikers have been forced to endure on the picket lines without water or electricity (both of which were cut off by management), it is clear that the abandonment of these workers is not only an issue of labour rights, but also of human rights. Since the beginning of the strike the workers have incurred a great deal more than a loss of wages. Some have lost their homes, the means to provide for their family, and their livelihood. We sat with Lita De La Cruz, the president of the New Union of Workers of Triumph in the Philippines, as she explained the urgency of the situation. Many strikers are no longer able to send their children to school and have lost their homes; some have even lost mothers and husbands due to a lack of essential resources and access to care. Lita went on to say, “The working class is providing the wealth of the country, yet we are treated like trash.”
NUWT president provides the delegation with a update on their struggle for reinstatement or a just settlement.
Under the guise of the recent economic crisis Triumph has attempted to justify the inhumane treatment and unjust dismissal of its employees by claiming that it has been forced to adopt a “global restructuring program” in order to ensure its survival through the harsh economic downturn. The fact of the matter is that Triumph workers have been struggling against downsizing measures, work casualization, and illegal dismissal for some 30 years. Triumph has been known to its workers as a union buster since at least 1985, when workers organized to resist the conversion of permanent positions to contract employment. This scenario has unfortunately continued to become a common practice in the workplace be it in Canada or the Philippines.
It is the belief of the workers that the factory will open once more as the compulsion to accumulate wealth pushes Triumph to expand in the Philippines. Of course, this is something that the government is heavily pushing for. In order to remain competitive in the global market and remain an attractive spot for foreign investment and production, the government assumes a very anti-worker, pro-corporate, commercial position. If Triumph should re-open the factory, one of the demands of the strikers is the reinstatement of their positions. At the very least, the workers are demanding that Triumph renegotiate the severance package offered to discarded workers as the current amount is considered insufficient. Another central issue in this conflict is the fight for unemployment benefits. Workers have been consistently denied government assistance or support throughout their struggle. I realize now more than ever that it is the workers and their children who suffer most as the burden of the economic crisis has been passed on to be carried on the shoulders of the worker.
In solidarity with New Union of Workers of Triumph (NUWT)
I must say that this reminded me of struggles of workers back in Canada fighting similar battles against the contracting out of jobs, precarious work, and intensification of labour. Workers being devalued, deskilled, and reduced to commodified, disposable automatons seems to be an international trend. I realized this is what connects us as workers. Listening to Lita today helped me see that even though the struggles of Canadians and Filipinos may be different on certain levels, we are all of us affected by the same neo-liberal restructuring and capitalist rationale. We are united though the need to sell our labour in order to live; this is what makes us human, this is what aligns us as workers. As such, international solidarity is crucial in order to pressure multinational companies such as Triumph to respect and recognize the rights of workers around the world and speak out against our failing, exploitative economic system. By the same token, the young women of the Salam Mosque Compound provided us with a tragic example of the dehumanizing trafficking of fresh labour sources in a market of limited opportunity, with no choice but to sell ourselves to survive.
