Page 16 - Hello Philippines January 2016 'B' issue

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DSPEoCIAmL REePOsRtT ic workers face long road
to labor rights at home and abroad
MANILA – Remy Borlongan, 59,
left the Philippines in April 1986, a
couple of months after the Marcos
dictatorship was toppled.
Her husband had met an accident
while riding a motorcycle. Not only
was he unable to earn a living for their
family, debts were also piling up. So
even if it meant she had to leave their
infant son for her husband and her in-
laws to raise, she followed her sisters
to Hong Kong, where she was to clean
house for a Chinese couple.
She had steeled herself for the hard
work and the loneliness, but she wasn’t
prepared for the abuse.
Her first employers did not speak
English and she spoke neither Mandarin
nor Cantonese, so there was always
some misunderstanding about what
they wanted her to do. The turning
point came several months later, when
her employers spent their vacation in
Mainland China, leaving her locked for
two weeks inside the apartment with
hardly any food.
“Naghihitsa ako ng sulat sa baba ng
building pag may nagdadaan. Sabi ko sa
sulat, kailangan ko ng tulong, pumunta
‘kako sila sa pulis at magsumbong sa
embassy (I would hurl notes down the
building for passersby. In my notes, I
would ask for help, telling them to go to
the police and to report my situation to
the Philippine embassy),” she says.
At that time, a foreign domestic
worker who was not able to complete
the two-year work contract had to be
sent back home; she could not simply
find another employer. So after only
five months in Hong Kong, Borlongan
returned to the Philippines, where
she again applied for a job, waited
for another working visa, paid the
processing fee, and bought her plane
tickets.
She was luckier with her second
employer. “Mabait sila at marunong
mag-Ingles (They were kind and knew
English),” she says.
She started socializing with her
fellow foreign domestic workers
who gathered at Victoria Park every
Sunday, their day of rest. There were
so many organizations in Hong Kong
then—church-based, regional, and
community.
“Merong mga Cagayanon, merong
taga Cordillera, mula sa iba’t ibang
probinsya. Maraming Pilipino, pero may
mangilan-ngilan ding galing Thailand,
Indonesia, India, at Nepal (There were
organizations for Cagayanons and those
from the Cordillera, from different
provinces. There were many Filipinos,
but there were some from Thailand,
Indonesia, India, and Nepal),” she says.
An activist when she was an
agriculture student at the Central
Luzon State University, Borlongan saw
the need to form a union to respond to
the various problems faced by workers
in a foreign land.
“Maraming police cases, tulad
ng rape at ‘yung tinutulak pero
papalabasing suicide. Merong pinlantsa
ang mukha (There were a lot of police
cases like rapes and those pushed off
to their death from the high-rises but
would be reported as suicides. There
were also those whose faces were
burned with a hot iron),” she says.
Other common problems
were underpayment of salaries,
maltreatment, and debt. Many migrant
workers would “pawn” or leave
their passports as “collateral” with
moneylenders in exchange for credit,
she says.
Because the Philippines has been
exporting workers since the 1970s, it
had by that time a relatively advanced
system for what it called labor
deployment that included a halfway
shelter for distressed migrant workers.
This, however, was not the case for
migrant workers of other nationalities.
Organizing the Filipinos into a union
was difficult because of the Martial
Law experience, she says. They feared
they would be arrested for asserting
their right to organize. For the other
nationalities, language was a major
obstacle.
In 1989, the Asian Domestic Workers’
Union was born, with Borlongan as its
founding chair. She remembers how
they had the meeting on New Year’s
Day, a non-working holiday. They
originally planned it for Christmas
Day, but since many were observing
the Christian holiday, they postponed
it for the following week. “Meron kasi
kaming mga (Among us were) Muslim,
Buddhists,” she recalls.
The union started with 5,000
members. They immediately got to
work and had their union registered
with the Hong Kong government,
then under British rule. Registration
got them not only legitimacy, but also
funding for an office, a shelter house,
and labor education seminars and
workshops.
Pioneering work. Despite the
precariousness of both their livelihood
and their organizing, members of the
Asian Domestic Workers’ Union were
true pioneers, says Rex Varona, who
has worked with Borlongan organizing
the union in Hong Kong.
The union allowed the heretofore
invisible workers to gain recognition in
the formal world of legal representation,
says Varona, former executive director
of the Hong Kong-based Asian Migrant
Centre. “They know their rights. They
know their duties. They pay their
monthly union dues,” which represent
not only the members’ discipline, but
NEWS
Remy Borlongan (left) in Banaue. (right photo) Rex Varona ©Photos from Facebook
also the union’s accountability to its
members.
As their work contracts last only two
years, union members come and go.
“Continuity of the organizing process
is precarious work. Members would
leave, along with the historical memory
of the struggles,” says Varona.
Among the “objective limitations”
of the union were having the members
in separate workplaces so that they are
able to meet only once a week, and lack
of resources and skills, he says.
It could have been easy for the union paved the way for the workers to raise
to collapse. But it did not.
It evolved, giving birth to several
nationality-based unions. The Filipinos
had theirs, then the Indonesians, the
Thais, and the Nepalese. This strategy
was a response to the different migrant
and labor policies of their home
governments.
“Of course they have a community
in relation to Hong Kong, and the
federation of the nationality-based
unions has been the means to respond
to international-based agenda,” Varona
says. “They are able to work together on migrant domestic workers’ unions in
wages and immigration policies.”
In 1992, migrant domestic workers
in Hong Kong were able to negotiate for
an increase in their monthly salary from force for the well-being of its members.
HK$1,900 to HK$3,200. “Naipanalo
namin ‘yun (It was a major victory),”
Borlongan says. The recognition of
their domestic work’s contribution
to the Hong Kong economy was also
important for her. “Hindi nila dati
kinikilala ang aming serbisyo (They
didn’t use to recognize our service).”
But they did not only win the war for government and then Akbayan party-
better wages and work conditions. They
were also able to change discriminatory, abusive recruitment agencies, migrant
unfair, and costly migration policies.
In 1987, the Hong Kong government
implemented the National Conditions
of Stay. Aimed at migrant domestic
workers, the rules banned them from
moving to another employer during
their two-year work contract, kept
them from signing a new contract with
a new employer, and required them to
leave Hong Kong within two weeks of
the termination of the contract. This
was the reason why Borlongan had to
January 2016 / Fortnightly – No. 2 • UK & Europe Edition
return to the Philippines after she left
her first employers.
The unionized migrant domestic
workers successfully campaigned
to stop several anti-migrant policy
proposals in early 2000s, as in ther
emoval of the maternity protection
for domestic workers (Editor’s note:
Corrected from earlier version where
it says that the NCS has been revoked).
“It was a political victory in two ways,” the national and international stage. A
Varona says. First, it was able to prove
that foreign workers were not stealing
the jobs from local workers and
second, the struggle and the victory
their concerns before international
meetings on CEDAW (Convention on
the Elimination of all Discrimination
Against Women) and the ILO
(International Labor Organization).
The politicization of the mostly
women workers were also evident in
the May Day rallies. “They always had
the biggest contingent,” Varona says.
“They were politically active. They had
representation in dialogues with labor
and immigration officials.”
In 2000, Varona says, the various
Hong Kong were federated and allied
with a global trade union. The union
and later the Federation of Asian
Domestic Workers’ Union have been a
The evolution also moved in the
direction of credit unions, as a response The chronology may be off, but Labor
to the need for savings for their
eventual return to their country and as
a counterfoil to usurious moneylenders.
HK to ILO, to PH to world. In 2009,
while working with the Philippine
list Representative Walden Bello on
workers groups in Hong Kong became
more aware—and then supportive—of
a government initiative to push for the
Convention on Domestic Workers, also
known as C189.
Philippine government records
show that the number of new-hire
Filipino migrant domestic workers
steadily rose from 260,000 to 330,000
between 1992 and 2009. Aside from
the substantial number, C189 made
sense for the Philippine government so
that it did not have to constantly put out
fires concerning these most vulnerable
of workers, more so of workers outside
the country.
Immediately, various stakeholders
in Hong Kong and the Philippines
began to do spadework to formalize
the rights of domestic workers on both
technical working group was formed at
the Philippine Senate and hearings were
scheduled. Senators Loren Legarda and
Jinggoy Estrada sponsored the proposed
legislative measure. Borlongan, by now
retired from working abroad and back
in the Philippines, also spoke during
deliberations on the bill. Varona’s
organization sponsored the trip of
union leaders to New York during the
deliberations on CEDAW and to Geneva
on C189.
On June 2011, the International
Labor Conference adopted the Domestic
Workers Convention (C189). The
following year, the Philippines ratified
it, the second country after Uruguay
to do so, allowing the landmark
international instrument to come into
force in September 2013.
On January 2013, several months
before C189 came into force, the bill
aiming to protect and uphold the
labor rights of domestic workers and
equalize them with those of workers
in the formal sector became a law.
Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz regards
the C189 as “the precursor of the
Philippines’ Kasambahay Law.”
Specifically, the law sets the
standards for the terms and conditions
of work, providing, among others,
minimum wage, health and safety
standards, and compulsory coverage
to social protection such as SSS
(Social Security System), Pag-IBIG
(housing credit facility), and PhilHealth
(Philippine Health Insurance Corp.).
It seeks to cover the almost 2 million
(1.9 million) domestic workers in the
Philippines, including the estimated
600,000 in the 16-24 years age group.
By December 2014, almost two