Migrant teachers’ rights should be protected

I would like to share to everyone a press statement by the Partido ng Manggagawa (PM – Philippines) regarding the recent termination of more than 30 Filipino teachers under the East Baton Rouge School District in Louisiana.

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Press Statement
June 10, 2009

Migrant teachers’ rights should be protected

The Partido ng Manggagawa (Labor Party – Philippines) is deeply concerned about the welfare of Filipino teachers who are deployed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

We have an ongoing probe into the plight of these migrant Filipino teachers. Our party is saddened that they have been subjected to iniquitous treatment and are still expose to very hard circumstances.

Leaving their families back home to be able to pursue the American dream, these teachers risked everything thinking that their credentials and talents will get them through.

Definitely, these people have discovered that following this dream is not at all easy. Hard work, it seems, is not even enough. In their case, they have to put themselves and their families in deep indebtedness, risk all their families’ resources for a shot at their dream of being financially successful in the future.

What is mainly pulling them down, however, is their being subject to a manipulative placement agency whose only objective it seems is to squeeze the maximum payments from them. What the agency is employing is clearly a form of debt bondage. Universal Placement International, headed by Lourdes Navarro, has put in place a web of policies and measures to ensure that these teachers would all be fully dependent upon the agency. Navarro employs threats, intimidation and deceit to ensure conformity from these teachers.

Many of these teachers are left with no choices but to kowtow to the placement agency’s whims as they are threatened by Navarro that she can have them fired. In many opportunities she makes it a point to assert to the teachers that she can influence some people in the EBR school district.

While, this is clearly a manipulative tactic utilized by Navarro, we can not blame the teachers from feeling threatened as it is the future of their respective families that are at stake.

Now, what makes this more distressing is the fact that at least 34 of these teachers have been terminated by the school district. We are anxious about the welfare of these Filipino workers.

Upon review of the circumstances leading to their termination, we believe that the process the school district employed may have violated the rights of these workers or at the very least has lapses that could have been handled better.

For one, there is lack of transparency as to the process of evaluation of these teachers’ performance. According to several teachers we talked to, there are no clear cut guidelines or procedure as to what can constitute termination and what the correct process should be.

Further, the school district should know fully well that foreign teachers will encounter issues related to differences in culture. The school district can not also discount the fact that aside from being in a new environment, the usual support system of these teachers, which are their family and friends, is not around.

While there maybe mentorship or training opportunities available for the teachers, some of those teachers who were terminated arrived in the latter part of 2008 and were not yet able to undergo these trainings. Take note that most of those terminated have been exposed to US schools for only less than a year.

As many of these teachers are in an adjustment phase, we believe that other constructive options were not seriously considered. A good example would be a transfer program in which teachers can be reassigned to other schools within the district where they may be able to perform better based on each teacher’s strengths and weaknesses.

And the fact that the school district, according to its associate superintendent for human resources, Elizabeth Duran Swinford, erroneously stated the reason for the termination of some teachers as “noncompliant” and will have them “refired” leaves a bad taste in the mouth. If they are taking these matters seriously, how come that the most important information on the termination papers, which is the rationale behind the termination, is wrong?

The school district’s action of terminating these teachers in a hasty process suggests that they treat labor, particularly migrant labor, as a commodity that can easily be disposed of. These teachers are human beings and they have families to feed and children to send to school.

We want to make it clear that we are not asking that special treatment be afforded to Filipino teachers. What we are advocating is the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and the whole laboring sector.

Lastly, PM strongly believes that labor rights are human rights and we believe that regardless of residence status, these rights should be guaranteed to all workers. Citizen, migrant or whatever your status maybe, the rights of a worker should be respected. ###