LETTER TO THE EDITOR : Labor Attaché replies: ‘Baliktad na ang Mundo…’

LETTER TO THE EDITOR : Labor Attaché replies: ‘Baliktad na ang Mundo…’

Congen Mosquera pointed out to me the head in your recent issue about “new LCP contract scares Canadian employers away”. I immediately noticed something missing in the bold 42 point headline – the word “bogus” – that should have been placed between the word Canadian and employers, in order to put the issue in its correct perspective.

To set your mind free, so to speak, as apparently you plan to continue Ms. Mila Echevarria’s scaremongering way in your next issue, I am forwarding to you copy of my exchange of emails with Ms. Echeverria, before the publication of the article, for you to determine for yourself if she is purveying correct information, and whether in doing so she is motivated by good faith or not.

Along with this, you may be interested to know that the recent sample contract as suggested by Service Canada for employers participating in the expedited labour market opinion program in Western Canada (www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/workplaceskills/foreign_workers/elmopp/elmoppfive.shtml) already mandates, among others, the following conditions which parallel our own requirements criticized by Ms. Echeverria, viz (quoted verbatim):

• “cover all recruitment costs related to hiring the foreign worker;

• cover full transportation costs to and from the workers country of residence and worksites

• make sure the worker finds suitable and affordable accommodations;

• pay for medical coverage until the worker is eligible for provincial health insurance

• prepare and sign an employment contract that outlines the wages, job duties, transportation, accommodation, health and occupational safety coverage that will be provided to the foreign worker.”

Attention is invited particularly to the prohibition against the collection of recruitment fees (now up to $7,000 per capita), which admittedly is one of the major root causes of the problems plaguing the program, and to which many agencies, recruiters, and even employers, are lucratively engaged in.

In this regard, you will agree that these conditions (translated to our own) should, with more reason, apply to caregivers, because of the personal nature of the services they render, and the live-in requirement, which make them especially vulnerable to abuses and exploitation.

Accordingly, on knowing this, I would suggest that if you plan to continue with part 2 of the article, you should be changing the head to properly indicate that both the Canadian and Philippine governments are scaring employers away, in the interest of fair play and balanced information.

Naku, talaga yatang nabaliktad na ang mundo: it has now become alright to accept that our caregivers have to turn over their family’s savings and borrow for the “privilege” of an indentured status in Canada, and that employers have now become so blase (and corollarily, our workers so servile) that they could now self-righteously demand entitlement to services to which they are not actually capable of paying.

Alas, to paraphrase the less illustrious Julius Ceasar: The trouble, dear Hermie, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underclass.

Cheers and all the best,
Frank Luna
Consular Officer-in-Charge of Labor
Philippine Consulate General
Philippine Overseas Labor Office Toronto