Labor group seeks abolition of placement fees

By Carmencita A. Carillo, Businessworld, Jan. 23, 2017

DAVAO CITY — A group representing trade unions, migrant workers groups, civil society organizations, recruiters and governments has signed a manifesto calling for the abolition of recruitment fees for migrant workers.

The Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK) is calling on President Rodrigo R. Duterte to abolish all types of recruitment fees being asked from workers who want to work abroad. PSLINK, which now has 387 members, is a national confederation of government employees and their unions and associations.

“The imposition of recruitment fees has only led to the exploitation of overseas Filipino workers (OFW),” PSLINK President Annie E. Geron told BusinessWorld in an interview. Ms. Geron is also vice-president of the International Public Services International-Global Union which is a federation of 21 million workers in 154 countries.

PSLINK led the rollout of the campaign in Davao City last week.

“Up to 10% of the Philippine population are OFWs, most of whom are in deep indebtedness because of the high recruitment fees being collected by agencies,” Ms. Geron said.

Rule V, Section 50 of the Revised Rules and Regulations governing the recruitment and employment of landbased OFWs provides that among the fees that should be charged to OFWs are documentation costs, competency certificates and medical examinations prescribed by the Health Department.

Section 51 allows the charging of placement fees but this should only be equivalent to a month’s basic salary as specified in contracts approved by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). Exempted from placement fees are domestics workers and those deployed to countries where the system does not allow the collection of said fees.

“But most of the time the agencies collect from P80,000 to P120,000 which is way more than the allowable amount,” Ms. Geron said. Abusive agencies exploit the domestic helpers and get exorbitant recruitment fees from them, she added.

Ms. Geron said only 10 out of the 2,000 big recruitment agencies in the country registered with the POEA do not collect recruitment fees from workers. How much more the agencies not registered with POEA, she added.

She said this is a global campaign considering there are other countries without regulatory bodies like the POEA where collection of such fees have become the norm.

PSLINK aims to have countries of origin and destination ratify and implement key international instruments to protect the rights of migrant workers in the recruitment process. Among the instruments she identified are the following: UN Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers; ILO Convention 87 on the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize; ILO Convention on Migration for Employment; and ILO Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers and the different conventions against forced labor

“The problem [of] illegal recruitment fees is more serious in Africa, South Asia like Bangladesh, Nepal,… and other countries in the Middle East,” Ms. Geron said.

POEA Davao Region Director Maria Carolina B. Agdamag said the rules are very clear on what are the specific fees that employers should collect. Among the fees chargeable against the employer are the visa and stamping fee, work and resident permit, round trip airfare, transportation from airport to jobsite, POEA processing fee, OWWA membership fee and additional trade assessment if required by the employer.