Paying the price for maternal care

THE Philippines is one of the biggest suppliers of domestic workers around the world, along with Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India. The growth in the deployment of domestic workers has its roots in the 1970s when the Marcos government institutionalized the export of contract labor to boost an economy suffering from rising unemployment and a balance of payments crisis.

The deployment of domestic workers abroad has effectively commoditized comfort and care for millions of households around the world. There has also been a feminization of foreign migrant domestic workers.

According to a Hong Kong broadsheet, citing a 2015 International Labor Office report, there are some 11.5 million foreign domestic workers worldwide, of which nearly 75 percent, or 8.45 million, are female. The biggest clientele of female domestic workers are the Arab states, with some 36 percent or 2.3 million deployed in the Middle Eastern countries.

The feminization of migrant domestic work is attributed to the “care crisis” in rich countries that have created a demand for cheap female labor from poor countries such as ours. High-income regions of the world have a large and wealthy population in need of care and assistance for their ageing citizens or growing children.

In short, our female migrant workers don’t just exert physical labor, they also provide “maternal comfort” lacking in affluent countries with children too busy to care for their elderly, or parents too busy to care for their own children.

In Hong Kong, the price of such maternal comfort is HK$4,600 (or about P31,000) – the monthly minimum wage for domestic workers. But for domestic workers, that can mean as much as 14 working hours per day. Still, female domestic workers from the Philippines account for the biggest number of foreign helpers in Hong Kong, with documented workers totaling 198,680 as of 2017.

The price of maternal comfort is much cheaper in the Gulf countries: US$400or (P20,000) per month, which is the minimum salary for domestic or household workers. Domestic workers in the Middle East, however, work longer hours than their Asian counterparts, normally up to 17 hours per day, according to a University of Amsterdam researcher.

The country’s female breadwinners remain the most vulnerable group of migrant workers as they tend to be physically isolated from other workers, have limited access to communication devices like mobile phones or Internet to communicate with their families, and are often restricted in their freedom of movement. Female domestic workers are thus more prone to physical, sexual and mental abuse, trafficking, prostitution and exploitation.

The abuse stems from the gaps in labor legislation because the rights of foreign domestic workers are often outside labor and social protection regulations in many of the so-called “host” countries.

Despite some highly publicized cases of maltreated Filipina domestics, the Philippine government is still considered as one of the most progressive and proactive when it comes to fighting for justice for overseas domestic workers.

For instance, the Philippines demands the highest monthly minimum wage of US$400 for its domestic workers overseas. And to address the gaps in the national legislation of host countries, the government, through the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), has taken to forging bilateral labor agreements to better protect the welfare of our OFWs.

Last September 19, 2017, Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello 3rd traveled to Abu Dhabi to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on labor cooperation with Saqr Ghobash, the Minister of Human Resources of the United Arab Emirates.

The MOU aims to enhance the cooperation of the two countries in protecting our OFWs. The key areas of cooperation involve collaborative administration of the contract employment cycle, including the use of information technology and exchange of information, strengthening regulations to combat trafficking in persons, and regulation of recruitment agencies to enforce fair and transparent recruitment practices.

With the MOU, OFWs in the UAE will have stronger protection, and the firm assurance from both governments that protection will be the first order of the day,” Secretary Bello said.

This is a major coup for Secretary Bello considering that the negotiations with UAE have bogged down since June 2014 after the Emirati ministry of interior introduced a unified employment contract, which disallowed foreign embassies from verifying and attesting the document. The verification of employment contracts for OFWs is required in order to ensure that the agreement is in accordance with Philippine laws and regulations.

With this new MOU, an identical employment contract signed by the worker and the employer will be recognized by both governments. The estimated 400,000 domestic workers in UAE, as well as those about to be deployed, are now assured of better working conditions that are fully recognized by the Emirati state.

The recently signed MOU likewise incorporates an annex on the “Protocol on Domestic Workers” that will govern the recruitment and admission of OFW domestic workers to the UAE. Among the rights guaranteed under the protocol are the fair and safe treatment of Filipino domestic workers, the timely payment and non-withholding of wages, 12 hours of daily rest, one full day of weekly rest, decent accommodation, medical treatment, non-retention of identity documents such as passports, and the non-payment of repatriation costs of the OFW.

The DOLE is in the process of forging similar bilateral labor agreements with other Gulf countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel, Lebanon, Oman, and Jordan, where thousands of domestic and skilled OFWs are employed in various businesses or households.

Although bilateral labor negotiations oftentimes a tedious and long-drawn affair, the labor treaty route has proven to be more effective in promoting and protecting the welfare of our OFWs than UN-sponsored international conventions.

This article first appeared in the Manila Times