An Eye for an Eye Will Only Make the Whole World Blind - Outsourcing America - Overseas Filipino Workers
Filipinos Working Overseas
In addition to the more than 92 million Philippines homeland population there is an additional 10% estimated Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW).
Life as an OFW is very hard. Filipinos never know how their jobs are going to end with wars, conflicts and economic changes in their country of work.
The economic recession in US is a blackeye to millions of overseas Filipino workers, not just working in US, but in all parts of the world. Some employers have no respect for their pride and dignities. While a Chinese journalist might describe the Philippines as a country of slaves he would obviously be doing it without knowing what's in their minds and hearts. Filipinos often become OFWs as a preparatory to their plans to have FINANCIAL FREEDOM in the future. It may be not for them, but for their children and family members who are receiving the fruits of their hard work.
One of the most popular Filipino OFW occupations is nursing. The followiing video depicts both the rewards and the hardships of one family member sometimes living as many as 8,000 miles away from their family and rarely getting home to see their loved ones. This video reflects a Filipino family where the wife spends most of her time overseas as a nurse. The accompaning music is by Barry Manilow.
Categories: Outsourcing
Tags: Overeas Filipino Workers
I spent 2-1/2 years going back and forth to Algeria on an LNG project. I was second in command and we hired 750 Phillipinos to do the skilled work we could not hire in country.(no one knows how to do anything in Algeria) I was extremely impressed with their work. We hired welders, pipe fitters, electricians and instrument fitters. We also hired 3000 locals but they were assigned to mostly help the Filipinos. They were great. We provided housing and a mess hall with a Filipino cook. I would go over to their mess about once a month. It was fantastic. Just like home to them. We gave them everything we could and they worked extremely hard. Without them, the project would not have been sucessful. Most of them had been away from home for 3-4 years. During the project, they never were able to go home and only got leave to Italy. Most went no where and just worked. We paid their company like $8 per hour for their labor but I think they only got maybe half that. Still, several of them told me it was the most money they had ever made and the conditions were absolutely the best they had ever had. We had put together a little village of connexes, the containers that are used to ship goods. We cut a door, one window into the boxes. They were insulated and we installed a window air conditioner. They did not like it because it was too cold. We furnished the insides with 4 beds, a table and chairs, a couch and 2 chairs and that was it. No TV or radio. They had TV, phones, radio, movies, pool tables, ping pong, etc in their rec building. It was used a lot. To stay busy, they would take scrap stainless steel pipe and beat it into belt buckles, cuff links, buttons for shirts, and all manner of things. They sold these to the Gringos!! Several of my Filipino friends gave me a really neat belt buckle when we began dismantling the project. I was really surprised. It took them about 2 weeks to make it for me. One of my trophies of working here and there.... I think everyone of those guys were working wherever they could to make like tolerable back home. Soem of them told me there was no way they could make the kind of money we paid at home. Everyone worked (including me) 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. Most of them made probably $20,000 a year. Most of the 175 Americans, Brits, Canadians and Frenchys we hired as supervisors, engineers and managers made well over $120,000 a year. There was quite a disparity in wages. Dont ask me what we paid the locals..... I would welcome another project with Filipino labor. By the way, we spent almost a billon dollars in the 2-1/2 years I was on the project for labor and materials. Including travel and all, the Filipinos represented about $50 million of the total.
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David, I really appreciate you adding this detail to this story. From the beginning I felt there was a lot missing in the way I told this story and you filled in a lot of details in a way that only someone who was there could.
I have heard that the amount most of these OFW companies eventually pay the workers is more like one third rather than one half and that as the skill level decreases so does the percentage. In recent years the Philippines government has passed laws to try and protect workers in countries where reciprocity agreements have been established, but many countries do not have any agreements with the Philippines and in those countries the OFWs are still badly abused.
It is estimated the money these OFWs send back home accounts for as much as 11% of the Philippines GNP.
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I knew and respected Filipino sailors when in the Navy. I have since known some women who married former servicemen and they are hard working people and they deserve respect..
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David, your series continues to enlighten your readers. I hope a lot of people are reading it.
-Josiah
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I really never knew how much the average worker really got of what we paid his company. In those days, the way it worked was for our agent to talk to a Filipino company official, usually at a high level, and tell them what we needed. They would then tell us whether they could provide what we needed or not. I think what they did was see if they could round up the number of skilled people we requested. We tested everyone because they had to be able to do what was advertised. I only remember sending one back who could not pass the tests. They used to tell me they were very worried about the Chinese and Koreans. Those two groups had been undercutting the Filipino's market of late and they could see the handwriting on the wall. We could have had Chinese for $5 an hour but we did not dare mix them with Algerians. They hated each other. Algerians at that time at least had a natural fear of the orientals. They would not let the Japanese on site even tho they had offered several times to perform projects at no cost. I know a lot of the Filipinos were hoping to go to India when we were through with them because there were going to be (and were) massive jobs there. I have no clue how the market shakes out today but I feel like the Chinese set the price for skilled labor.
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David, That is an interesting comment and one I totally agree with.
So would you also say that the Chinese have a great amount of influence on the price of skilled labor throughout the world?
Could countries like China perhaps have more to do with America's unemployment issues than countries like the Philippines?
I would love to see some more discussion on this thread. I feel like finally some things are starting to make sense.
Thank you, David.
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