Retooling Filipino workers to make them more competitive

By Leslie Ann Aquino, Manila Bulletin, Apr 28, 2019

Filipinos better upgrade their skills if they want to keep in step with foreign nationals similarly eyeing jobs that could be theirs for the taking.

For starters, why not start learning a new foreign language?

In a report, the Bureau of Local Employment of the Department of Labor and Employment said the high and increasing demand for workers in the Administrative Support and Services, Arts and Recreation, particularly in Online Gaming, and Information and Communications who are proficient in foreign languages is expected to grow in the next two to five years.

BLE Director Dominique R. Tutay said the country is actually in need of more multi-lingual interpreters.

“We cannot produce as much as needed in the market. Even now, we are still lacking. If you will notice in tour groups the interpreters are also their own nationals because we don’t have the talents here,” she said.

Tutay said opportunities are “out there” but sometimes an applicant lacks the necessary skill needed.

“It’s really a question of does your specific skill match with what is required in the labor market? It all boils down to skills. That’s why we keep saying continue to retool and reskill because the kind of work we have now is really undefined…if you are not updated you will be replaced,” she said.

Tutay recalled the time when a Philippine Economic Zone Authority investor was in need of programmers for a financial language program.

“They said they have a number of foreign nationals coming from a certain country, but we told them let’s test the market first. Give us a month to look for talents. So, we published the vacancy and we ended up with one applicant who failed in the actual test,” she said.

That’s the only time, Tutay said, when they approved the coming in of programmers who are foreign nationals who had to undergo all the permit requirement.

Foreign nationals issued with an Alien Employment Permit were subjected to Labor Market Test under Article 40 of the Labor Code.

An AEP is one of the requirements for the issuance of a work visa to foreigners, who intend to engage in gainful employment in the Philippines for more than six months. It is issued by the Labor department once it is ascertained that a foreign worker will be performing a job that local workers are not capable of doing.

The AEP requires that a job be published first to ensure that no Filipino is willing to take it before being awarded to a foreigner.

However, an official of the Associated Labor Unions Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) believed the labor market test methodology being used by DOLE is “grossly wrong.”

“This methodology is flawed…nobody is protesting the foreign worker applicant because no one is reading newspapers and that nobody knows that they should protest the applicant for that position. That is why many foreign workers are doing the work that local Filipino workers are also capable of doing,” ALU TUCP spokesperson Alan Tanjusay said.

“You look at newspapers advertisement on AEP application publications every day, aside from construction jobs, they are also applying for ordinary jobs in IT & Services sectors,” he added.

Data from the BLE revealed that 115,652 foreign nationals were issued with AEPs from 2015 to 2017 or an average of 38,550 per year.

More than 50,000 AEPs were also issued in 2018. The Top 10 Nationalities issued with AEP in 2018 are Chinese with 33,516; Japanese 4,236; Korean 3,765; Indian 2,417; Taiwanese 1,974; Malaysian 1,190; Vietnamese 1,095; Indonesian 1,047; Thai 586 and American 516.

Majority of the AEPs issued were for technicians and associate professionals which according to the BLE report is attributed to the educational level and language requirement of employers in the following industries: administrative and support services; arts, entertainment and recreation; information and communication; manufacturing; construction; and wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and personal and household goods.

But BLE said the said industries are still dominated by the local workforce.

Other foreign nationals with AEPs were employed in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, and construction industries occupying the positions of managers, supervisors, technicians, plant and machine operators and assemblers, service workers, and professionals.

Data provided by BLE also revealed that they were mostly deployed in the National Capital Region, Regions III (Central Luzon), IVA, (Calabarzon), VII (Central Visayas), II (Cagayan Valley) and X (Northern Mindanao) which are all highly urbanized and center of commercial hubs.