Recruiters’ highly illegal acts of forcing OFWs to resign

The Supreme Court again expressed its outrage at the exceedingly irregular acts committed by recruitment agencies and their foreign partners in pressuring OFWs to sign prepared resignations and quitclaims, to the damage and great prejudice against the poor migrant workers. These people seemingly never learn.

This was in the case of Al-Masiya Overseas Placement v. Hazel Viernes (G.R. No. 216132) decided by the highest court of the land on January 23, 2020. The writer of the decision is Visayan-speaking, appointee of President Duterte, Associate Justice Henry Jean Paul Inting. He denounced the manipulations done by the recruiters’ representative in Kuwait who hoodwinked the poor Filipina domestic helper to sign a resignation letter, whereby she gave up all her rights. The labor arbiter, the NLRC, the Court of Appeals all rejected such a plain manipulation against a poor and helpless OFW. This is an old tactic applied by powerful employers in committing injustice against their powerless victims.

The Court declared that quitclaims, waivers and releases are looked down with disfavor and are commonly frowned upon as contrary to public policy. The long line of jurisprudence and legal precedents holds that these one-sided and highly unfair documents are contrary to public policy and ineffective to bar claims for the full measure workers' legal rights. The rationale for this rule is that the employer and the employee do not stand on the same footing considering that the recruiters and the foreign employers have all the powers, the influence, the money and the connections, while poor workers in a foreign land was standing alone, without any legal advice.

Justice Inting, writing for the Supreme Court, cited a lot of legal precedents, where the highest court of the land came into the succor of many innocent and innocent workers who were subjected to pressures, deceits, manipulations coercion, threats and intimidation to affix their signatures to some unfair documents prepared by big law firms and forced upon unlettered and simple men and women who work abroad. The Court declared that what was done to Hazel Viernes was an act of constructive and illegal dismissal. The mandate by the Constitution to afford full protection to labor extends to OFWs even beyond our territorial jurisdiction.

The words of the Court was stern and succinct: "The Court will not renege on its duty to protect the weak against the strong, and the gullible against the wicked x x x" The recruiters were warned by Justice Inting and directed to observe common decency and good faith in their dealings with their unsuspecting employees. This decision assures us that in this country, under this adminsitration, labor justice is alive and well.