Gov’t pressed to dismantle cross-border barriers to labor
INDIAN teenager Poojah calls out to shoppers passing by to try the newest pizza variant her Filipino employer is selling at an upscale mall in Manila.
“I’m an intern,” she tells curious diners asking how she ended up working at the pizza parlor.
The establishment does not hire foreign workers, the manager said.
So when asked whether she plans to work in the Philippines after graduation, Poojah’s beautiful deep- set eyes looked uncertain. “I don’t know. I’m not a Filipino citizen. They [employer] would require work permits,” she said.
In an economy where the jobless rate had been seesawing between 6% and 7% at least in the past five years, liberalizing the domestic labor market to foreign workers breeds argument.
And that debate has reached the House of Representatives. In February, a bill seeking to relax a policy requiring employers to consider Filipino citizens for skilled- labor openings first before recruiting from abroad was filed.
Under the existing Labor Code of the Philippines, foreign nationals need to obtain an employment permit from the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE). Companies wanting to hire foreign workers are also required to advertise all vacant positions first in case there are takers from the domestic pool of talents.
GRAPPLING WITH THE INEVITABLE
Labor Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz said those rules should be eased as members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) become a single bloc this year.
“Under review is the removal of publication requirements for foreigners seeking to work in the Philippines,” the Labor chief said in a phone interview yesterday.
“If they fall under the skills occupational shortage list, then that requirement can be disposed with.”
But that would take an amendment of the Labor Code, and Ms. Dimapilis- Baldoz is making a renewed push for Congressional approval more than a year after her department released a list of occupations in the Philippines that face supply shortage. That list — which stirred controversy among those espousing protectionism — counts architects, chemists, geologists, pilots, and mechanics, among others.
“That is one aspect of integration. We’re creating a single market and therefore you try to standardize a system for all,” she said, adding that she has been in talks with her counterparts elsewhere in ASEAN. “The understanding is that everybody is reviewing their [ labor] laws,” with the “goal of liberalizing the movement of skilled workers and professionals.”
ASEAN labor ministers, Ms. Dimapilis-Baldoz said, are working on the so-called ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework that would be the basis for certification of skills and licensing, among others.
“This framework for ASEAN has passed through the technical level. ASEAN leaders will have to agree to it for final approval,” she said.
Business leaders said further opening up the Philippine labor market to foreigners would be
inevitable in the face of ASEAN integration.
“Respective governments should make it easier for skilled labor to have access,” Teresita SyCoson, chairperson of the Philippines’ largest bank BDO, said during an April 20 interview, adding that hiring foreign workers “will be good because we need outside views as well.”
Former Ambassador Alfredo M. Yao, president of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said in a telephone interview yesterday: “You can’t stop that as part of AEC (ASEAN Economic Community),” adding that there may be a skills gap the proposed law will address.
Still, Mr. Yao cautioned that “if you open Pandora’s box, everybody will come in,” particularly citing a possible influx of cheap labor from “Indonesia and Sri Lanka.”
Asked if he would consider hiring foreign pilots, Mr. Yao — who holds a stake in AirAsia Berhad’s local unit after selling his homegrown airline Zest Airways, Inc. to the former — replied: “That was two or three years ago… Now we don’t need to.”