It's time to talk about labor mobility in APEC

The 2007 ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers is a landmark achievement in the sense that this is a first effort to address this issue in ASEAN and one that sets forth obligations for both sending and receiving economies. However, the onus for protecting migrant workers continue to reside in the sending countries with provisions obligating them to establish and promote legal practices to regulate recruitment of migrant workers when most of the violations take place in the receiving countries. The Declaration is after all a product of the shared concern on how to deal with the large number of illegal migrants and not the orderly flow of labor to meet economic needs.

And that is precisely the problem. As far as the receiving countries are concerned migrant workers’ rights are the sending countries look out. The receiving countries maintain that workers can come but on their terms and not on anybody else’s. Thus they are more concerned with illegal migrants rather than protecting the rights of those that are there legally.

The challenge has been how to make the receiving economies accept that they too are stakeholders in this effort. Now there is a unique opportunity to tackle this issue from a business and economic perspective in APEC. The APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) working jointly with the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) is arguing that demographic transformation arising from aging and low birth rates and globalization of industries has led to a situation where labor mobility within has been increasing and will likely become a permanent feature of the regional economies. However, the failure to recognize this can lead to APEC economies responding more to national sovereignty argument than harsh economic reality. This then leads to the adoption of overly restrictive entry policies that encourage underground migration and the unequal treatment of migrant workers and neglecting business and public service needs.

Other organizations have come up with the same conclusion. Manpower Inc. surveyed nearly 33,000 employers across 23 countries and territories and found out that an average of 40 percent of employers worldwide are having difficulty filling positions due to the lack of suitable workers available. Experts say that many businesses will fail because they have not planned ahead for the talent shortage and are unable to find the right workers. And that this is not a cyclical trend but is going to last for decades.

To us, it makes perfect sense for APEC to take a more comprehensive look at the various dimensions of this labor mobility issues because it impacts business in the region, is part and parcel of the regional integration process that it declares to be its purpose, and this movement if not properly managed can lead to tensions between economies. From a business perspective, it is not a call to open borders but rather how to responsibly meet real business and public service needs. Japan and Korea are two receiving countries who have recognized that and have embarked on a deliberate policy to bring in workers to meet certain needs through bilateral arrangements with the sending countries. This is for us the way to go. Handled in this manner, tensions such as have arisen in the past between ASEAN economies — two come to mind, the Contemplacion case and the Sabah mass roundup — might have been avoided.

As a signatory to the ASEAN Declaration on Migrant Workers’ Rights and hosts to a substantial number of foreign workers, it would also make perfect sense for Singapore to include a discussion of this issue in APEC as they prepare to take over the chairmanship in 2009. Frankly, we don’t see why Singapore should wait for endorsement from those who have traditionally opposed this when this is the best opportunity to look at this issue in a new light and in a dispassionate way – the initiative as it is coming from business and academe rather than governments and NGOs. As hosts they have a lot of latitude in deciding the agenda. Singapore has nothing to lose and will gain respect from her neighbors if it does so. Not doing so is bound to raise questions why.  — Roberto R. Romulo