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The Migration Phenomenon:
Issues and Challenges for the
Labor Movement
Keynote Address by Elmer C. Labog
National Chairperson, KMU
28 October 2008
Good afternoon, comrades and friends. This is a very important day for us
as we seek to understand the global phenomenon of migration, and its
impacts on the working class. I would like to congratulate the
International Migrants Alliance (IMA) for spearheading this alternative
gathering we are all in – the International Assembly of Migrants and
Refugees (IAMR). Truly, this is an assembly that carries the voice of
migrants and refugees.
This conference comes at a very opportune time when the world is being
battered by a financial crisis touted to be the worst since the Great
Depression. It is the working class that is most affected by two GFMDs -
the “global forum on migration and development," and another of GFMD that
we can call as the "global financial meltdown and destruction." For
indeed, the global crisis will bring the destruction of productive forces,
of natural and human resources, in order for capitalism to survive.
Now, more than ever, the workers’ movements worldwide have to reflect on
the impact of labor outmigration on their ranks. The current global
financial crisis has laid bare the extreme dependence of backward
countries on labor-export for their economic survival, and the utter
ruthlessness of monopoly capitalist institutions in manipulating global
labor markets, tiding them over their periodic economic crises.
The number of unemployed people in the globe has now reached a record-high
of more than 200 million. Twelve years ago, unemployment was only at 150
million. Underemployment, meanwhile, now reaches more than 1.5 billion.
And the global crisis threatens to slash more livelihood from both
labor-exporting and labor-importing countries.
The current financial meltdown is projected to have an adverse effect on
the migrants all over the globe. In 2005, there is already an estimated
185-192 million migrants worldwide representing 2.9 per cent of the global
population. For the same year also, there were already 13 million
documented refugees in the world, with 7 million coming from Asia, 3
million from Africa, and almost 3 million from developed countries.
Migrant workers suffer much while the capitalists and the governments that
trade them enjoy profits. In a recent report, the UN International Fund
for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB) placed total OFW remittances for 2006 at $14.6 billion. The
IFAD-IDB report titled “Sending money home: Worldwide remittances to
developing countries” ranked the Philippines as the fourth biggest
recipient of migrant remittances worldwide. India was at first place with
$24.5 billion, followed by Mexico with $24.2 billion and China, $21
billion.
As governments scamper to survive the current crisis, labor export policy
will be intensified resulting to an intensified movement of persons. Faced
with the incapability of providing jobs in home countries, governments
will be hell-bent on commodifying labor and sending workers abroad in
exchange for the much-needed remittances to keep the economy afloat.
The Philippine government for one has announced 200,000 job opportunities
in Australia and Canada, in an obvious effort to exert the crisis out of
the country. This would mean pushing them into more 3D jobs - dirty,
difficult and dangerous, with low wages and with rights not even
recognized, much more respected.
While the GFMD and successive reports by the ADB, World Bank and the IMF
have paid lip service to and cried crocodile tears over supposed
deleterious side-effects of the labor-export policy, they have also laid
stress on its ability to soften the impact of economic downturns on the
world capitalist system at large. To quote ADB Consultant Kevyn Mellyn in
his “Worker Remittance as a Development Tool Opportunity for the
Philippines” (June 13, 2003):
“Global remittances by individuals were estimated at over $100 billion for
2001, with $72.3 billion going to developing countries…this is (i) more
than capital market flows, (ii) more than official aid flows, and (iii)
more than half of foreign direct investment flows. Moreover, remittances
are more stable than any of these sources and tend to be counter cyclical,
thus serving as a buffer from external economic shocks.”
The IFAD? also says in its online “Remittance forum”:
“Today, the impact of remittances is recognized in all developing regions
of the world, constituting an important flow of foreign currency to most
countries and directly reaching millions of households – approximately 10
per cent of the world’s population.
The driving force behind this phenomenon is an estimated 150 million
migrants worldwide. They sent some US$300 billion to their families in
developing countries during 2006, typically US$100, US$200 or US$300 at a
time, through more than 1.5 billion separate financial transactions. These
funds are used primarily to meet immediate family needs (consumption), but
a significant portion are also available for savings, credit mobilization
and other forms of investment.”
With the onset of the current financial crisis and impending global
recession, underdeveloped and developed economies alike will most
certainly make use of this available “lifeline” to save their sinking
economies. What this entails for “globalized” labor in terms of further
suffering, oppression and exploitation will be enormous, aggravating their
legitimized and institutionalized slavery a hundredfold. And so, the
unwanted and undesirable task of propping up the tottering world
capitalist system will be borne substantially by migrant labor.
Statements from imperialist institutions that superficially criticize
certain flaws in the LEP-led “development model” actually serve to gloss
over bigger, more basic issues behind this phenomenon. These are:
1. Whether promoted locally or globally, labor-export policy (LEP) as a
prescription for economic development has only furthered the
underdevelopment of already backward economies.
On the whole, the nature of benefits derived from an LEP-led economy is
consumerist, with very little trickling down as new, entrepreneurial
capital. The defenders of LEP blame this on the local culture of sending
countries, like the prominence of extended families and their lack of
investment skills. However, the real culprit is built into economic
backwardness itself: underdeveloped economies simply do not have the level
playing field required to encourage more nascent forms of economic
activity. Big foreign businesses, or those MNCs and TNCs, dominate the
economies of migrant-exporting nations, making micro-investing in these
countries risky and short-lived.
In making it a cornerstone program for alleviating the effects of economic
crises, governments in Third World countries are consciously ignoring the
bigger imperative of putting their economies on a sounder basis: that is,
by ending land monopoly in the countryside and undertaking national
industrialization, twin programs that are inimical to the interests of
foreign monopoly capital.
2. Labor as a productive force is being destroyed on an unprecedented
scale and in a more profound way than ever before.
Overseas contract work is labor flexibilization at work at the
international level. This labor flex violates even those formal “core
labor standards” set by corporate-funded institutions to cosmeticize
modern-day slavery. The so-called “brain drain” that seemingly worries
some reform-oriented defenders of LEP is in fact a mere symptom of this
systematic workforce destruction. The low-end labor market demands of
developed countries impose themselves on the skimpy, high-end labor
markets of underdeveloped economies. Hence, the pathetic phenomenon of
doctors downgrading themselves into nurses, nurses downgrading themselves
into caregivers, and teachers, engineers and other professionals
downgrading themselves into domestic helpers and factory workers. Data on
this
And even as this is happening, monopoly capitalist-ruled governments in
receiving countries are maliciously using the LEP as a “soft” method to
erode their own workers’ hard-won trade union gains. Trade union busting
could guarantee that developed countries will keep their doors open to
increasingly cheap migrant labor despite the financial crisis. The extent
of this malice may be gleaned from the ludicrous spectacle of
company-friendly trade union centers in the United Kigdom acting as hiring
agencies for foreign workers, and wittingly or unwittingly, against their
worker-compatriots. Coupled with increasing unemployment in imperialist
homegrounds due to the current economic downturn, a noxious soup of social
conflicts (not the least of which is racial) is being cooked up by
monopoly capital that prevents inter- and intra-class unity among
marginalized sectors in both sending and receiving countries.
In the Philippines, for example, around 4,000 migrants are currently
inside various jail prisons in the world, 10,000 are stranded in the
Middle East, and more than 30 OFWs are waiting for death sentence for
charges they were never guilty of. And these are documented cases alone.
3. On the basis of rampant promotion of LEP, new and distinct forms of
imperialist plunder have evolved out of traditional ones.
The education funds of client-states in underdeveloped countries – already
minuscule after being squeezed to pour more subsidies into military and
debt-servicing – are in fact being appropriated still by developed
countries through employment of public school-trained professionals and
highly-skilled workers from sending countries. This is bound to intensify
as labor forces in backward economies are hit fully by the effects of
global recession, many of them will be pushed to go abroad. For how can
they stay longer in their home countries that suffer from collapsing
export-oriented industries, plummeting wages and a galloping inflation.
A whole new “industry” of silk-tied usurers have grown leech-like around
the remittance system for migrant workers, extracting quick megaprofits.
From electronic-transfer fees by foreign monopoly banks like Western Union
to arbitrary exactions by their “own” governments, migrant workers are
certainly one of the most exploited sectors of the global labor force.
From the foregoing discussion, it is fairly obvious that imperialism is at
the very heart of the problem. By previously creating conditions of
backwardness in the sending countries through neocolonial trade,
preserving local feudalism, preventing national industrialization and
fostering clientelist relationships with their governments, the stage was
set long ago for labor outmigration. Exported labor force is utilized as a
global reserve army of labor, which can then be ruthlessly exploited and
simultaneously made to serve as a battering ram against their relatively
entrenched and unionized brothers in capitalist centers.
This gives us an insight on the role of labor to end the LEP. Is it merely
about attending to the needs of labor by strengthening unionism here and
abroad? On the contrary, it is a role that is anti-insular and requires
that the labor movement lead and reach out to other sectors pinned down by
underdevelopment and labor exportation. This means that holdovers of
feudalism so prevalent in Third World countries must be eliminated through
genuine and thoroughgoing land reform, and that a national industry free
from imperialist domination be developed in each “sending country.”►
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PROGRESSIVE LAWMAKERS
EXTEND SUPPORT TO THE INTERNATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES
(IAMR); CRITICIZE GLOBAL FORUM ON MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT (GFMD) AS
PRO-FORCED MIGRATION AND INIMICAL TO THE INTERESTS OF FILIPINO MIGRANT
WORKERS
We progressive lawmakers of Bayan Muna, Gabriela Women's Party and
Anakpawis in the Philippine House of Representatives declare our full
support to the International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) and
the International Migrant Alliance (IMA) as a counterpoint to the Global
Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), a global meeting viewed as a
mere talkshop of governments of policies that are inimical to the rights
and interests of Filipino migrants and their families.
Filipino migrants around the world who were forced to seek work abroad
have to contend with long hours, insufficient pay, various forms of abuse
and discrimination, and punishment for crimes they did not commit. Their
organizations have been left out of the GFMD.
The GFMD is only concerned on how to "effectively address current and
emerging patterns and trends in migration" to capture remittances from
migrant labor that is estimated by the World Bank to have reached US$251
billion in 2007 up from US$31 billion in 1990. The so-called concern of
governments of both labor-sending and labor-receiving countries and big
local and multinational corporations and banks who have been raking in big
profits from migrants' hard-earned remittances is actually rooted in the
hard facts that include remittances outpace official development
assistance (ODA) which amounted to a mere US$54 billion in 1990 but
reached only US$104 billion in 2007.
Forced migration does not bring development to any nation. Governments and
various international institutions hail the Philippine labor export
program as a "best-practice" of development using remittances to sustain
growth.
This is actually another form of dependence since the so-called growth is
consumption-led and does not contribute to agrarian modernization and real
industrialization of the country.
We side with the close to 10 million Filipinos forced to leave their
families and work abroad because of he backward feudal structures and
neocolonial plunder of the nation's wealth that worsen the joblessness and
depressed incomes in the country.
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Arroyo's labor export policy and the GFMD promote the trafficking of
Filipino women and children as mail order brides, domestic workers and
caregivers, and prostituted women in countries such as the US, Japan,
Malaysia, Singapore, Kuwait, and Canada, among others, with some estimates
placing the number of Filipina victims of trafficking from 300,000 to
400,000 annually.
The GFMD and the Arroyo government are talking about migrants as mere
commodities of trade. Migrants are not to be made responsible for the
development of economies or countries. This is the responsibility of
governments. The Arroyo government is completely wrong to keep on relying
on remittances as the key to keeping the economy afloat especially in the
light of the global recession in perpetuating its labor export policy that
breaks up 3000 Filipino families daily.
We vow to maximize Congressional oversight functions and craft legislation
for the protection and promotion of migrant rights, expansion of
government intervention for Filipino migrants in distressful situations
abroad, and to make criminally-negligent government officials accountable
for their actions and inactions towards migrant workers and their
families.
We vow to oppose all policies and designs that seek to heighten the level
of exploitation of all migrants as we link up arms with them in their
struggle against modern-day slavery. #
Rep. Satur C. Ocampo
House Deputy Minority Leader
Rep. Luzviminda C. Ilagan
Gabriela Womens Party
Rep. Liza L. Maza
Gabriela Womens Party
Rep. Teddy A. Casino
Bayan Muna (People First)
Rep. Rafael V. Mariano
Anakpawis (Toiling Masses |
