HAGATNA, Guam—Guam Sen. Frank Aguon Jr. asked Philippine Labor Secretary Marianito Roque to send a labor attaché to Guam to oversee the needs of Filipino workers expected to fill thousands of jobs that will be generated by the impending US military buildup on the island with the relocation of thousands of US Marines from Okinawa.
Aguon last week wrote to Roque on the heels of a complaint filed by nine H2 workers who left Guam on August 27 after reluctantly accepting a meager amount of cash from Base Corp., their former employer. The United States H2 visa is issued to unskilled workers and is the most commonly used for workers in farming or construction.
They filed a complaint against the company at the local and federal labor departments for wage theft and maltreatment.
“It is critical that a Philippine representative with labor and welfare expertise assist workers in their need as they adjust to their new living and working environment,” said Aguon, chairman of the Committee on Economic Development, Health and Human Services and Judiciary.
The nine Filipino construction workers came to Guam early this year with hopes of earning good salaries to send back home to their families. But they flew back to the Philippines and decided to abandon their labor complaint after receiving $1,500 each from Base Corp.
“They could have stayed to see their case through because the federal labor department offered to give them immigration relief that would allow them to stay legally,” said Felix Aguon, a local labor-rights activist who assisted the Filipino workers. “But they wouldn’t take chances. They just wanted to leave.”
Danilo Navarette, spokesman for the group, signed a contract with the company to work as a carpenter. His contract stipulated a minimum wage of $13.56 an hour, but he only made $11.70 an hour. The employer deducted $200 from his monthly pay checks.
“We didn’t know the purpose of the deduction,” Navarette said in Pilipino in an interview before he left Guam. “We spent more for the recruitment than the amount we saved.”
The complaint was filed by Navarette, Victor Cortez, Ruben Enriques, Vergilo Enriques, Arnulfo Ruiz, Ferdinand Lubong, Rolando Aquino, Leonardo Paulino and Roberto Fabian, who all came to Guam in January.
Their contracts were supposed to be good until October but Base Corp. fired them after they filed the complaint.
“More Filipino workers with H2 visa will be coming here. We don’t want them to suffer what we had experienced,” Fabian said in Pilipino.
Guam will need about 30,000 foreign workers to pick up the construction jobs that will be generated by the relocation of 8,000 US Marines from Okinawa.
The island is dependent on the federal guest-worker program to fill its huge labor gap. The Philippines is a main source of manpower for Guam’s construction industry. Written by Mar-Vic Cagurangan / Special to the BusinessMirror
No comments:
Post a Comment