MIGRANTE International
May 1, 2024
On International Workers Day, Filipino Migrant Workers declare their commitment to persevere and advance the struggle for higher and living wages, job security, just, safe and humane working conditions, and the right to organize, strike and protest. OFWs are commemorating International Workers Day by organizing marches, protest actions, speak outs and other activities throughout countries in Asia Pacific, North America, Middle East and Europe to amplify their just demands in solidarity with migrant workers and local workers of diverse nationalities.
This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the institutionalization of the Philippine Labor Export Program (LEP), engineered by the former dictator Marcos Sr. in 1974 and further intensified by his son, Marcos Jr. For 50 years, the LEP has proven to be detrimental to the rights and welfare of our Filipino migrant workers where innumerable labor and human rights violations and abuses have been committed against them.
OFWs across the globe are now faced with multiple economic, political and climate crises and yet the Marcos Jr. regime remains hell-bent on ramping up its marketing and selling of cheap Filipino labor overseas to profit from government extortion schemes and the steady influx of remittances. Their livelihood and jobs are in constant risk as the global economic crisis are causing companies and businesses to implement mass layoffs where migrant workers are often the first to be displaced.
Countless reported cases of labor exploitation and contract violations, dangerous working conditions, low-wages and long working hours with no benefits and protection, unjust treatment and discrimination are the realities confronting our OFWs that the Marcos Jr. regime deliberately downplay. Fom OFWs working as cleaners in the United Arab Emirates experiencing grueling working hours without overtime pay and proper rest, factory workers in Taiwan who are not provided with health and safety equipment, to shipyard workers in Australia being paid slave wages, to seafarers in the U.S. being denied their wages and abandoned by their employers and recruitment agencies, to truck drivers in Europe working long hours for low-wages, sleeping and eating inside their trucks.
After more than 700 OFWs in New Zealand were laid off last year, hundreds remain struggling to make ends meet or find alternative employment, while the escalating US-led wars and conflict in the Middle East where more than 2 million OFWs reside and work are striking fear among our kababayans who are concerned for their safety and livelihood. OFWs and their families in distress are clamoring for access to aid and assistance. Aside from a meager P20,000 livelihood assistance and loan offers for returning OFWs, the Marcos Jr. government offers no other meaningful support and clear plan to stop the cycle of forced migration.
The worsening economic conditions in the Philippines are driving up the numbers of Filipinos who are forced to find work abroad for the survival of their families. In 2023, the recorded number of OFWs deployed abroad on temporary contracts documented by the Dept. of Migrant Workers reached more than 2.3 million, an increase from the 2019 pre-pandemic figures.
The real value of the wages of Filipino workers remains stagnant amid sky-high prices. The daily minimum wage in the National Capital Region is pegged at Php 610 (USD 10.56), not enough for a Filipino family to survive with the inflated prices of basic goods. Meanwhile, Filipino labor remains cheap and insecure. The crisis of unemployment and underemployment in the country is worsening and the Marcos Jr. administration continues to ignore demands from the workers to end the policy of contractualization in the country that threatens job security for millions of Filipino workers.
Transport workers launched a three-day strike to protest against the anti-worker and anti-poort Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP) which favors foreign big business over our jeepney drivers and operators and entails the dumping of imported public transport vehicles in the country. The jeepney phaseout threatens the livelihood of our transport workers, and exacerbates the gridlock transport crisis in our country that is affecting millions of people who rely on public transportation.
The prolonged heat waves caused by El Niño pose grave safety and health risks for workers, peasants, farmworkers and urban poor, while aggravating the food, land and livelihood crisis in the country.
Instead of heeding our calls for higher wages, job security, livelihood support, protection and assistance, the US-Marcos regime is peddling its scheme for Charter Change. In his push to open up our resources, labor power, and economy to full foreign control through Cha Cha, Marcos Jr. has revealed his true colors as the country’s chief puppet to US imperialism.
Marcos Jr’s subservience to the US government extends to his expansion of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) to four new sites in the country. The increasing presence of US troops and bases is an attack on our national sovereignty. It is a means to keep the Philippines under the control of foreign monopoly capital. Rather than pursue a peaceful foreign policy, the Marcos regime opened the country’s doors to the biggest war games on our shores with this year’s ongoing multilateral Balikatan exercises involving 11,000 US troops and other foreign militaries. The US escalation of Balikatan is an open threat against Chinese imperialist interests in the Asia-Pacific region. The US is now fomenting war against China, with the Philippines as its battleground.
Migrante International calls on OFWs and Filipino Migrants to boldly assert our democratic rights and struggle for higher wages, job security at home, rights, genuine freedom and democracy in the Philippines. We must resist through collective action amid intensifying state violence and repression of the Marcos Jr. regime and repressive, anti-migrant and neoliberal policies of our host countries. We must tirelessly educate, organize and mobilize Filipino migrant workers especially among the ranks of the most vulnerable and exploited.
The fight against imperialist dominance remains core to the struggle of Filipino workers.
Filipino workers march today not only to protest our worsening conditions, but also to oppose the threat of inter-imperialist war in our homeland.
With renewed vigor and determination, let us unite and stand in solidarity with workers and oppressed peoples of the world in our common struggle to resist the worsening capitalist exploitation of workers and inter-imperialist conflict and wars.
