2,300 OFWs appeal to High Court to enforce NLRC order

Some 2,300 leaders and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) appealed to the Supreme Court (SC) to take a second look on the 27-year-old case and decide on the full merits of their petition, seeking to enforce National Labor Relations Commission’s order for the Texas-based giant group employer to pay all the 1,975 OFW-petitioners more than US $609 million plus interest.

The OFWs from the provinces of Batangas, Laguna, Cavite, Rizal, Metro Manila, Bulacan, Bataan and other provinces appealed to  the SC to decide on the merits of the pending petition in G.R. No. 168923 docketed as Bienvenido M. Cadalin et. al vs. Kellog-Brown & Root, et. al. The 2,300 OFWs are all petitioners in the biggest discrimination suit to reach the SC in its more than 109 years of existence.

The records, according to petitioners, showed unreasonable delay in rendering final and executory judgment NLRC’s decision dated December 3, 2002 which ordered their American employer, Kellog-Brown & Root, the associated Texas-based giant Halliburton Group and their Philippine agency to pay all the 1,975 OFWs/ awardees more than US$609 million plus 12 percent interests earnings from finality of said decision.

The December 3, 2002 decision of the NLRC became final and executory due to failure of respondents’ employer and agency to post the case or supersedes bond of US$600 million and for failure to file their appeal as defeated parties within the reglementary period, which is mandatory and jurisdictional.

The monetary awards are for discrimination pay, actual, moral and exemplary damages, hazard pay, unpaid wages for the unexpired portion of contracts, retirement and saving benefits, excluding other employment benefit for overseas employment in the fabrication and oil fields of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s. –JEAMMA E. SABATE, Manila Bulletin