[Kabar-indonesia] AT: US Seeks 15, 000 Filipinos to Construct Guam Military Base

[Joyo3]

Asia Times
Friday, November 17, 2006

Into the Breach Again: US Looks to Filipinos

By Cher S. Jimenez

MANILA - When the United States moves to downsize its
military facilities in Okinawa, Japan, and begin
construction on new military bases designed to house 8,000
marines and their families on the Pacific island of Guam,
Filipino construction workers will likely do most of the
heavy lifting.

In September, Philippine labor officials accepted an
invitation from Guam - a US territory - to discuss hiring
15,000 Filipino construction workers to work on the new
military facilities, including barracks, administration
buildings, schools, training sites, runways and
entertainment establishments. On-land construction
activities on Guam are set to begin early next year and the
estimated US$10 billion project is scheduled for completion
in 2014.

The US Congress' Overseas Basing Commission had earlier
estimated that the cost of relocation and building the new
base in Guam, including facilities for a new command post
and housing for the marines' family members, at about $2.9
billion. For undisclosed reasons, the US military now says
the total cost will be closer to $10 billion, of which Japan
has agreed to shoulder 59% of the bill. Cheap Filipino
labor, it is believed, will help bring down those spiraling
costs.

If the deal is done, it will mark the latest big hire of
Filipino workers by the US military and its affiliated
business interests. The US has employed more than 7,000
Filipino workers - nearly half of them undocumented - in its
four main military camps in Iraq, according to Philippine
labor officials. Neither the Philippine nor US governments
has publicly owned up to how thousands of Filipino workers
have slipped into Iraq and found work on US military
facilities.

US federal policy prohibits the employment of non-Americans
inside US military facilities, but the Bush administration's
heavy use of private contractors has blurred the lines
between public and private functions. After a Filipino truck
driver killed in Iraq caused a domestic uproar against the
Philippines' participation in the United States' war effort,
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in July 2004 banned any
new deployments of Filipino workers to Iraq.

Philippine-based non-governmental organizations tracking
Arroyo's support to the United States' global counter-
terrorism campaign contend that both Washington and Manila
have quietly decided to ignore the official ban to maintain
the steady supply of cheap, English-speaking Filipino
workers in Iraq. Washington clearly seems to favor Filipinos
over other English-speaking nationalities for its most
crucial and sensitive military-related construction
projects.
In March 2002, Washington and Manila secretly processed the
papers of 250 Filipino construction workers to help build
new or overhaul old detention facilities now in use at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the US controversially holds
hundreds of suspects as part of its "global war on terror"
campaign, according to Philippine officials. For their
efforts, Filipino workers received a $1,000 monthly salary -
far below what it would have cost the US military to employ
US citizens.

Contractual Gratitude

Local labor recruiters have been told by government
officials that the Guam assignment is a US reward for the
Arroyo administration's strong support for its "war on
terror". There is also an element of trust: US soldiers
frequently train with their Philippine counterparts and US
advisers are currently training and providing logistical
support to Arroyo's campaign against Muslim separatists in
the southern Philippines.

Philippine officials estimate that if and when Filipino
workers are deployed to work in Guam, they will earn wages
similar to those paid for the Guantanamo operation. From the
United States' perspective, hiring cheap Filipinos makes
good economic sense at a time when the US military budget
has spiraled out of control with the mounting expense of
operations in Iraq and to a lesser degree Afghanistan.

It also appears to be part of a quiet outsourcing process:
the US Department of Defense's 2005 base realignment and
closures recommendations aimed to pare "unnecessary
management personnel" at Guam's existing facilities,
including "military, personnel and contractor personnel", to
the tune of 174 lost jobs over the period spanning 2006-11.

Cheaper Filipinos are expected to fill some of the lost
contractor positions, Philippine labor sources say. And they
will be charged with building facilities alongside some of
the most advanced and important assets the US military
maintains outside the continental US. This includes Andersen
Air Force Base, which can handle aircraft ranging from
unmanned aerial vehicles to long-range strategic bombers,
and Apra Harbor, which services everything from nuclear
submarines to aircraft carriers. Andersen's special hangar
facilities are designed specifically to protect the special
radar-evading skin of B-2 bombers.

Sources from the Philippine recruitment industry say that,
apart from their low cost, Filipino construction workers are
"highly favored" by the US because of their English-language
skills. According to industry sources, Middle Eastern
companies that have recently hired large numbers of Filipino
construction workers there are often subsidiaries of or
somehow affiliated with big US reconstruction firms,
including Halliburton, Bechtel and Flour Daniel.

"Americans favor Filipino workers because we can understand
them and they speak English," said Loreto Soriano, president
and chairman of the board of LBSeBusiness, a Manila-based
recruitment firm. "Construction manuals and plans are
written in English, so we can follow easily, and that's what
they like."
Their overall skill sets, including their ability to work
with modern construction technology, however, are very much
in question. The Philippine Overseas Employment
Administration (POEA) recently said that from 2001 to 2005
it was only able to meet 56% of global orders for 103,167
construction workers because of their low skills, including
their inability to operate modern construction technology.
Much of that demand has come from the Middle East, where
booming oil prices have led to a flurry of new construction
and infrastructure projects.

Soriano said the Philippines generally could not meet the
surging demand for highly qualified construction workers,
including welders, flame cutters, plumbers, pipe fitters and
carpenters. For the past few months, job advertisements for
construction workers and engineers rose by almost 29%; there
were new requests for 4,000 overseas placements in
September, according to official statistics.

As of 2005, the Professional Regulation Commission
registered 312,478 construction-sector professionals, where
nearly one-third was listed as qualified civil engineers.
However, the POEA, the government agency that oversees labor
deployment abroad, had registered only 737 professionals
over the period spanning 2002-04. Now, local employers are
complaining about the growing number of construction workers
who leave their jobs without notice after they have been
placed overseas.

Some in Manila fear that if the government paves the way for
15,000 workers to take jobs in Guam, the already labor-
strapped local Philippine construction could come to a total
grinding halt. However, that could also happen to the
planned new military facilities in Guam if Filipino workers
lack the skills to implement US building designs effectively
and efficiently.

Cher S Jimenez is a Manila-based journalist with the
BusinessMirror newspaper. She recently received a grant from
the Ateneo de Manila University to conduct investigative
journalism on illegal workers in the United Arab Emirates.

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