HK workers hit DOLE chief for sabotaging their pay hike campaign

THE United Filipinos in Hong Kong (Unifil), a migrant workers' group, accused Acting Labor Secretary Marianito Roque of mere grandstanding when he announced recently that he had clinched a "moderate" pay hike deal for Hong Kong-based Filipino domestic helpers.

Unifil-Migrante-HK chairperson Dolores Balladares said Roque actually "sabotaged" their own wage-hike campaign. She said Roque's "moderate" pay hike negotiation for OFWs with Hong Kong Labor and Welfare Secretary Matthew Cheung might be construed by the HK government as a willingness by Filipino workers to accept such a meager pay increase.

"Our campaign is for a substantial wage hike that is commensurate to what we do and what we need. Roque's tacit approval of a moderate pay hike could be taken by the HK government to mean that foreign domestic workers (FDWs) here shall accept another piecemeal wage hike," Balladares said.

"What does moderate mean? Another pittance? If Roque bothered to consult OFWs pushing for this demand, he would know that we do not stand for a pay hike that will not lighten our burden."

In the past three years, Balladares said domestic helpers' salary in HK was only raised by HK$30.

She pointed out that since last year, FDWs in HK through the Asian Migrants' Coordinating Body (AMCB) have conducted mass actions and submitted petitions for a wage hike to the HK government. She said that even without negotiations, domestic helpers in HK are bound to have their wages increased.

"Odds are in favor of a pay rise for us such as HK's continuing economic development and the fact that HK has an enormous budget surplus that to exclude FDWs from the benefit packages it is giving away will be unjust. Roque is hallucinating if he thinks it's his alleged negotiation that clinched the deal," Balladares fumed.

She said the Roque-Cheung meeting was just an afterthought of Arroyo and her entourage. "GMA's public releases before the trip did not mention lobbying for our wage. Her speech in the gathering of Filipinos at Grand Hyatt did not mention such purpose. It was not in the agenda of the meeting she had with selected migrants' organizations. Now, Roque comes strutting like a conquering hero as if it has been Arroyo's objective all along while it was only an incidental result of her junket," she pointed out.

"Was it not GMA who said in 2003 that a suggestion for a 5 percent wage cut for FDWs was 'a very good input'? Since then, GMA and the DOLE have been dead silent on our campaign to recover our lost income. They don't have any political ascendancy to claim credit for a fight they've never been involved with," she said.