Workers press $7.8-M claim from US company

More than a thousand overseas Filipino workers are appealing to the United States government to intervene in their 16-year-old claim for $7.8 million in unpaid wages and other benefits from their US-based employer.

In a letter to the US Embassy in Manila, the 1,690 OFWs sought the assistance of American authorities to acquire their retirement, overtime or holiday and differential pay under the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The workers’ counsel, Gerardo del Mundo, said the OFWs were hired from 1976 to the 1990s to work in different Middle Eastern countries by Brown and Root International Inc. (BRII), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Co. based in Houston, Texas.

The OFWs filed a labor complaint, denominated as a class suit, on June 6, 1984 with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC). The case later reached the Supreme Court.

The High Court, however, remanded the case back to the NLRC for further proceedings.

In the letter they submitted to the US Embassy, the OFWs attached clippings of US newspaper articles showing that Richard "Dick" Cheney, former chief executive of Halliburton, received $27 million in retirement benefits from the company before his nomination as the running mate of Republican presidential candidate George Bush Jr.

The OFWs bewailed this, saying the amount they are demanding from Halliburton is measly compared to Cheney’s multimillion-dollar retirement pay.