The Strategic Perspective for Struggle and Networking in the Migrants Sector

In behalf of the militant and anti-imperialist Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement of Workers) in the Philippines, warm greetings to you all! We are glad to have been invited to this conference, and to have been given the chance to share our views regarding the development and consolidation of regional networks to defend and promote migrant workers’ rights.

Before I proceed to the core issue at hand, let me expound first on the development of labor-export as a policy that is integral to imperialist globalization. In this context, it is a key “industry” which helps keep the crisis-ridden economy of backward countries afloat and temporarily absorbs the shock of the current global crisis, but which has the opposite effect in the long-run. Here I will present the Philippine migration experience as a case study. This will serve to illuminate salient points that I will make later regarding appropriate networking strategies for promoting migrants’ rights.

I. The Philippine experience with LEP

In the Philippines, the phenomenon of labor export began as soon as US imperialism completed its conquest of the islands at the turn of the 20th century, involving the eradication of the nascent Philippine Republic founded by nationalist revolutionaries and the extermination of 1.6 million Filipinos in what is now known as the Philippine-American War. By 1946, when the American imperialists bestowed sham independence to the colony and converted it into a semi-colony, the Philippines had become a significant source of cheap surplus labor in the international market – now dominated like never before by US imperialism.

This was aggravated and given impetus in the 1960s by the depletion of frontier lands in country and the slowing down of the garments industry in the 1970s. The resulting influx of landless peasants into an urban workforce that was already bloated by joblessness in the garments sector was answered by government and its US advisers – not by moves to expand industry to accommodate this labor market glut – but by speeding up labor out-migration. Those toilers that this semi-feudal and semi-colonial economy could not absorb were given the choice of a pauper-like existence in the country or selling their labor power abroad, on terms negotiated by the Philippine government in favor of the contracting parties.

The latest imperialist model for underdevelopment – “globalization” or “neoliberalism” – has sealed the fate of future generations of workers, peasants, and petty-bourgeoisie in the Philippines under the present socio-economic system. Under globalization, labor-exporting has graduated from being merely another monopoly capitalist method for intensifying the general exploitation of workers and other toilers, into an insidious imperialist mantra for economic development – or underdevelopment – that conveniently dovetails into its broader anti-development prescriptions of privatization, deregulation and trade liberalization.

What this has accomplished by way of accelerating the destruction of Philippine productive forces may be gleaned from highlights in our labor migration statistics. Currently, and based on incomplete statistics by the Philippine government, there are more than 8 million Filipinos outside their homeland (8.1 to be more exact); 3.2 million of them are permanent residents or immigrants; 3.6 million are temporary (or those whose stay overseas is employment-related); while 1.3 million are irregular (those not properly documented or without valid work permits). The last two categories are composed of transient workers more familiarly called in the Philippines as OFWs, or Overseas Filipino Workers.

Notably, not all permanent Filipino residents abroad are employed: of the 1.2 million emigres registered at the Commission on Filipino Overseas (CFO) in 2003, only 29% (365,000) have gainful jobs. The rest are students, housewives, minors and retirees who depend on other members of their families for livelihood.

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