Workers' day

Of 22,000 Schengen visas for Filipinos processed by the Netherlands embassy in Manila last year, 17,000 were for commercial sailors.

Netherlands Ambassador Robert Brinks, who gave the figures during his country’s National Day reception last Thursday, expressed hope that in issuing those thousands of visas, the embassy did not inadvertently become a party to human trafficking.

Not too long ago, the Dutch capital of Amsterdam was one of the top destinations for Filipino women sold for sex by international human trafficking rings operating mostly from Belgium. Filipinos visiting Holland were dismayed to see their compatriots among the sex workers displayed behind glass panels in the streets of Amsterdam.

These days, reports of Filipinas being trafficked for sex in Europe have become rare. Our sailors for the most part also seem satisfied with their employment conditions. But we should still look forward to the day when the majority of visas issued by all countries to Filipinos will be for leisure travel, not for work or permanent residency.

With an estimated nine million Filipinos working overseas – about a tenth of our population – labor has become one of our biggest (and most profitable) exports.

They are overseas mainly for lack of decent employment opportunities in their own country.

There are in fact many job openings in the Philippines, and not just for seasonal employment such as those in the agriculture sector. But because of the poor quality of education and weak coordination between economic sectors and education authorities, there is a mismatch in skills and the requirements of various industries.

Millions of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have lifted their families out of poverty. Each year they contribute billions to GDP and their consumption patterns are credited for the continuing boom in shopping malls.

Still, at some point in the near future, we have to start bringing back the skills that we continue to lose. It will reunite families, and it is crucial to have all hands on deck in nation-building.

Several nations that were born amid great turbulence, and which continue to grapple with serious social and other problems, have managed to achieve prosperity. I attribute this partly to the fact that their people have not left by the millions to escape difficulties back home.

Post-apartheid South Africa, for example, which also celebrated its National Day last week, is now the “S” in BRICS – that informal grouping of the developing world’s economic powerhouses, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Israel, whose creation – also celebrated last week - is still not recognized by most of its neighbors, had the 27th highest per capita GDP in the world last year at $31,986, larger than that of South Korea, which ranked 34th with $22,778. The Philippines placed 125th with $2,223, a little ahead of countries such as Sudan and Kiribati, according to the ranking drawn up by the International Monetary Fund.

As the birthplace of Jesus Christ, Israel is a desirable destination for Catholic Filipinos. The Jewish state is host to thousands of Filipino workers. Israel’s situation is of course markedly different from that of the Philippines, and the Jewish Diaspora is also extensive. But it’s worth noting that Israel was built block by block by Jews who arrived from all over the world – the opposite of the outward movement of Filipinos.

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Tomorrow, Labor Day, thousands of workers will again stage mass actions in key Philippine cities, with the same demands: better pay, lower prices for basic goods and services.

Happy workers generally mean higher productivity, and some of the most successful companies in this country pay their employees well. Unfortunately for the Pinoy worker, there are also major employers who will burn in hell for all eternity for unfair labor practices. Still other employers genuinely aren’t making enough to pay their workers more. These are the owners of enterprises that will simply fold up or downsize drastically if they are compelled to pay higher wages.

For many workers, leaving their own country for jobs overseas then becomes the best option for survival.

The country started sending workers overseas in droves in the 1970s, initially for construction projects undertaken in Libya by Philippine contractors. From North Africa, Filipinos spread to the Middle East as the oil boom brought wealth to the Arab world and created a massive labor demand that required the importation of workers.

It was martial law, and the Philippines’ long slide from the top of the Asian heap to near-bottom in many aspects of human development and national competitiveness was starting. While neighboring Southeast Asian countries sprinted toward economic “tiger” status, the Philippines became increasingly less appealing for employment.

As the quality of education deteriorated, we also saw a decline in the number of highly skilled Filipino professionals particularly in science and technology.

Seeing the men earning so much more overseas in blue-collar work than they could ever hope to make in their own land, Filipino women also began trying out their luck overseas. Soon there was a steady stream of Filipino women leaving for Hong Kong, Singapore and the Middle East to work as household helpers. Those were the days when “dogs and Filipinos” were banned from elevators used by guests in some Hong Kong buildings.

Many of the women who left to become maids were teachers by profession, and Philippine education still has not fully recovered from that loss.

Today there are fewer reports of Filipinas trafficked for sex, but we are sending more people overseas for employment. In Hong Kong, “Filipino” is still used in some households as a generic term for a maid.

In addition to domestic helpers, we are exporting chambermaids, nursing aides (the nurses are jobless), cooks, construction workers, and yes, sailors.

There’s a joke that only three countries in the world are capable of global annihilation: the United States, if it deploys its nukes; China, if all its people jumped at the same time and knocked the planet out of orbit; and the Philippines, if all its migrant workers go on strike.

This would be truly amusing if the OFW phenomenon didn’t have such tragic social costs, and if we weren’t running out of the workers needed for national development.

On Labor Day 2012, we should commit to create the environment that would entice our workers to return home for good.