Global Trade – People for Sale
Paper for the Workshop on Migration and GATS-Mode 4
Prepared by Ramon Bultron, Managing Director
Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM)
30 September – 2 October 2005
Stuttgart, Germany

First of all, allow me to thank the organizers of this event for inviting me to speak and share about the issues and concerns confronting the migrant workers from the South vis-à-vis GATS Mode 4. This event, I believe will help the participants of this conference/workshop to understand migrant workers’ struggle against the neo-liberal policies of globalization.

This paper will attempt to present the dynamics of countries within the region where I come from, where exportation and importation of human labor are dominant.

Migration, rooted in a nation’s economic, political and social conditions, is varied within the region especially among country members of the Association of South East Asian Nations or ASEAN. On one hand, receiving countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and to a certain degree, Thailand, have significant numbers of migrant workers from southeast and south Asia. On the other hand, sending countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam have great numbers of their people working in other countries to the extent that the first two have clear national policies of labor export.

The Systematic Exportation of Human Labor

Philippines and Indonesia lead the countries in the ASEAN with the most number of workers deployed overseas.

For these two countries, overseas employment is very much a part of the national economy to the extent that it has developed the most sophisticated labor export schemes as compared to other countries of the region.

The Philippines started its systematic export of its workforce way back in the 70s when the country rapidly slid down the economic ladder. The deteriorating socio-political situation at that time has led to the institutionalization of national mechanisms for swifter and more organized deployment of Filipinos overseas.

Such mechanism served the country first in terms of saving the economy through the foreign remittances that migrant workers send. The dollars that overseas Filipinos send to their economies steadily became the major factor that consistently cushioned the decline of national economy.

Secondly, migration also served to ease the socio-political tension that resulted from the economic crisis. Poverty and unemployment resulting from the flawed economic system of the country became the breeding ground for the forced migration of millions of Filipinos.

To date, OFW remittances remain as one of the top sources, second only to agriculture, of the nation’s income.

Deployment of Filipinos abroad has become such a lucrative industry in the Philippines that the national government had to establish its own recruitment agency now known as the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.

Indonesia, meanwhile, started its systematic export of its nationals in the 1980s. Though even before the said decade, Indonesians are already present largely in the Middle East, Singapore and Malaysia, it was only in this period that the government fully integrated overseas deployment in its national development program.

The main destinations of Indonesian migrants are Malaysia, due to its historic ties with Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. Singapore also holds a significant number of Indonesian workers and also, especially for the past years, countries of East Asia such as Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Although the labour export program of Indonesia is not as developed as that of the Philippines, Indonesians are fast approaching the number of Filipinos in terms of overseas workers in major labour importing countries.

Like the Philippines, the Indonesian government is also keen in maximizing migration to generate its much-needed national income. In 1994-1999, the Indonesia Ministry of Labour has targeted to send 1.5 million workers abroad and it is estimated that they will remit about US$3B.

Overseas deployment as a national policy of the Philippines and Indonesia has become even clearer since the past decade.

The economic slide made even faster by the globalization-driven policies of liberalization, deregulation, privatization and de-nationalization has displaced many workers, farmers and other low-paid service workers. These are the main groups of people who are forced by their dire situation to work abroad.

Their vulnerability has been exploited by their own national governments to cushion the blow of crippling national economic policies. Former Philippine President Fidel Ramos even sugarcoated the forced migration of Filipinos by proposing during the APEC Meeting in Manila in 1996 the concept of “internationally-shared human resources”.

Taking from the migration of Filipinos and Indonesians, it can be seen that the major labour-exporting countries of the ASEAN are the countries that belong to the bottom economic ladder.

Migrants are Expendable

Sabah in East Malaysia is also a major destination of migrant workers from the southern Philippines and Indonesia. It has a major concentration of unauthorized migrants that include Indonesians who came from Kalimantan and Filipino Muslims who escaped from the conflict in Mindanao.

Singapore, meanwhile, is much similar to Malaysia in its encouragement of foreign professionals. In fact, Singapore has high prejudice for professionals over unskilled workers that it offers incentives to them such as residency status.

Migrant workers in Singapore can be found in the construction industries although the biggest number of foreign workers are domestic workers who come mostly from the Philippines.

The migration policy of Singapore has evolved to such an extent that it has even made the importation of foreign workers a source of national income by charging levies to employers who wish to employ non-Singapore workers.

Such a policy has been copied even by other countries like Hong Kong that used the Singapore model to implement an Employment Retraining Levy that now also includes domestic helpers. Such a levy that will impact the income of employers of foreign domestic workers was offset by the HK$400 wage cut implemented the same year as the levy (2003).

Brunei, meanwhile, like its counterparts in the Middle East, relies heavily on migrant workers for its main economic sector that is the oil industry. In fact in 1988, it was estimated that more than 70% of workers in the private sector are foreign workers. Most of the migrant workers are from Indonesia.

In Thailand, migrants started to pour in the 1990’s during the pre-crisis period. Burmese migrants comprise almost 84% of the total number of foreign workers in Thailand working mainly in the construction sector, agriculture and fisheries. Workers from Cambodia and Vietnam also constitute Thailand’s foreign work force.

From this migration patterns, it can be gleaned that labour importing countries within the ASEAN have been, in the past, relatively easy in accepting foreign workers. These periods of “welcoming” migrant workers, authorized or not, correspond to the stage when these economies experienced economic growth (substantial or not, or as a whole or in parts).

Migrant workers in these countries have become the motor that operated the sectors that local workers have let go in favor of professional or industrial jobs. These are the jobs, including the construction, agriculture, and service sectors, which many have come to consider as the dirty, dangerous and difficult (3D) ones.

However, in the post 1997 financial and economic crisis within the region, migrant workers in host countries have become targets of economic attacks especially the undocumented migrants who are vulnerable to economic exploitation, arrest and deportation.

Never in the history of migration of workers within the ASEAN region has there been massive operations of host countries to crackdown on undocumented (or some say unauthorized) migrants.

The celebrated case of deportation of Filipinos and Indonesians in Sabah highlighted the zeroing in of host countries on undocumented migrants who, in many instances, have been made as scapegoats, together with their legal counterparts, for the social and economic crisis that besets the ASEAN economies since the 1997 economic crash.

Previous efforts of Malaysia to curb the rise of unauthorized migrants in the country did not yield any spectacular change. The policies themselves of Malaysia on foreign labour frequently change as well reflecting the changes of its economy.

In general, during the economic “boom” period, policies on migrants are lax. This can be attributed to the need of the host countries for the cheaper labour that migration can provide. When a crisis starts, policies become stricter to the extent that human rights of migrant workers are violated as what happened in Sabah where Malaysian authorities allegedly treated the arrested migrants inhumanly.

Labor Agreements and Criminalization of Migrant Workers

Labor agreements in the region whether bilateral or multilateral is more of labor market niching rather than promoting and protecting the rights and wellbeing of migrants.

One example of multilateral agreement is the Bangkok Declaration on Irregular Migration in 1999. This agreement did not yield concrete benefits as to the protection of unauthorized migrants but focused more on the ways to reduce the number of unauthorized migrants. The Bangkok declaration was done during the region’s economic crisis that saw the crackdown of undocumented migrants in many labour-importing countries.

Agreements with regards to migrant workers remain largely bilateral in nature as shown by Malaysia’s agreements with Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand. Thailand also has an agreement with Burma.

The Philippines, meanwhile, has an umber of migrant-related agreements with countries outside the ASEAN region. These agreements pertain more to the regulation of deployment of Filipino workers to the host countries.

An example of which was the recent agreement made by the Philippines with South Korea (similar agreements were made between South Korea and Indonesia and South Korea and Vietnam), after the recent massive crackdown of undocumented migrant workers. The bilateral agreements also followed from the implementation of the new Employment Permit System (EPS) that allowed a section of undocumented migrants to work legally in South Korea for a certain number of years.

The new agreements saw labour-exporting countries grabbing call of South Korea for new workers in its factories to replace those who have been deported. Philippine Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas herself has unveiled a new Korea deployment program of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.

Organizations of migrant workers in Korea, however, fear that the new program will not be able to solve the issue of undocumented migrants. They said that the EPS in Korea and the bilateral agreements recently forged did not include provision for increase of wages of migrant workers or their protection from abuses of employers. The EPS even includes a provision restricting migrant workers from looking for another employer while in Korea. This will, in fact, lead to more undocumented migrants as migrant workers leave ran away from their employers due to unresolved labour issues or abuses.

Global Facilitation of Migration (GATS Mode-4) Worsens Forced Migration

Now let us look on the global aspects of multilateral agreements that are now being debated in the WTO specifically on GATS Mode 4. Generally, GATS is an investment agreement. However, it also speaks about the movement of people which is enshrined in the agreement called Mode 4. It is a multilateral agreement that will ensure the facilitation of migration in a global scale.

There is a notion on the part of governments that if we cannot stop out-migration, we might as well help to facilitate it. Thus, it is seen that GATS is only a matter of administrative responsibility on the part of the government and the corporations according to one of the OECD-WB paper released in 2003.

Another concern is the fear that persons who move under Mode 4 on a temporary basis will then try to establish themselves permanently in the host country. Thus despite the demand from the LDC to open up the labor market of developed countries, many of the developed countries like the US and EU are reluctant to accept Mode 4.

Despite the mantra of free flow of migration, migrant workers are still the subject of strict visa and immigration rules of the labor-receiving countries and even worsen as a result of the US led war on terror.

With this condition both labor sending countries and developed countries are finding it difficult to reconcile especially on mode 4 for fear of migrant workers to settle permanently in the host countries and can create a condition for the uncontrollable increase in the numbers of unauthorized migrant workers. However, developed countries are still interested in Mode 4 but it is more on the one-sided liberalization of labor market of the LDC.

With this condition, GATS Mode 4 will only have a one sided benefit. This will be more advantageous to the developed countries and multinational corporations which give free access to service suppliers (personnel of MNCs) to enter third world countries. It will also be the source of brain drain (loss of highly-skilled workers and professionals from third world to developed countries) and intensify contractualization of labor globally

On the other hand, since GATS Mode 4 only speaks about the free flow of labor and not of the safety and protection of the rights and wellbeing of migrant workers, it is expected that this agreement will only expose migrant workers to a poorer working and living conditions. And because of the worsening economic and political condition in most of LDC, more migrant workers will fall victims to exploitation and abuses.

In terms of migrant workers rights to join and form unions, since Mode 4 will only allow temporary migration, it will be even more difficult for migrants to form or join unions and will surely lose negotiating power in labor disputes and wage negotiations. Thus, migrant workers can easily be subjected to rotating deployment via sub-contracting (short-stay, non-renewal of contracts; seek employment elsewhere);

And since GATS intend to create a common standard in labor and trade related activities which is even worse that the current practice, GATS Mode 4 will force migrant workers to accept more inhuman treatment and condition including much lower salaries and without benefits.

To sum-up, I believe that GATS Mode 4 like the other agreements mentioned above whether multilateral or bilateral will only strengthen and intensify the existing labor export policies in most of the third world countries and can only lead in setting up a standard that is unfavorable to migrant workers.

In addition, labor agreements that start from the wrong notion of facilitating migration will only worsen the exploitative condition of migrant workers for it does not address the root causes of forced migration. And for as long as forced migration exist, migrant workers need to organize their ranks and link their issues with the struggle back home. It is only through the united action and struggle of migrant workers that the rights and wellbeing of migrant workers can be guaranteed.

Thank you and good day.##