Op Ed by Dr. Aileen Duldulao, National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON)
About the author: Dr. Aileen is a public health research scientist and community advocate who lives and works in service of social justice. She currently serves on the Board of the Filipino Bayanihan Center in Portland, OR which was launched with the support of NAFCON.
The bar is pretty low when it comes to minimum wages, nonetheless, a minimum wage exists to help prevent exploitation of workers. And most would agree that one should be paid honestly for an honest day’s work. Despite these laws and notions, wage theft is rampant, especially within our most vulnerable and exploited populations such as migrant workers.
Now migration has always been a hot topic political issue that riles up division and debate between the two main political parties in the US. This is even more apparent in Trump’s America as ICE ramps up targeting of migrants. And despite Oregon being a so-called Sanctuary State, the material conditions that migrants face here are ripe for them to be victims of wage theft.
Maria is a migrant Filipino worker in Portland who has experienced wage theft first hand. This is her story.
Due to the conditions back home in the Philippines, Maria dropped out of school after finishing the 4th grade, and is unable to read, write, or speak in English. At age 52, she was forced to migrate to the US because of lack of jobs and livelihood in the Philippines and the need to support her family back home. In Portland, she took a job as a caregiver with a well-respected member of the Filipino community.
This is an all too common experience for Filipino migrants and many end up in the caregiving industry. Filipino migrants take up the hidden, thankless jobs as caregivers—bathing elderly clients, feeding them, changing soiled clothes and bedding, administering medications, helping them in and out of bed, and keeping them company through long, isolated days. They provide intimate, physically demanding, and emotionally taxing care that is often undervalued and unseen.
In this care home, Maria was made to sign documents she did not understand and was exploited in numerous ways. For a number of years, she was paid a measly rate of below $50/day, while working on call 24 hours/day for days at a time. It is estimated that Maria worked thousands of unpaid hours, amounting to over $195,000 in unpaid wages. Maria’s employer eventually became her landlord and she had to return $1000 of her wages back to her employer each month for rent. When Maria faced unexpected expenses—such as sending money to her family in the Philippines or being unable to work after catching COVID at the care home and not having health insurance—she would take on debt from her employer.
Compared to the minimum wage of $12 per day in her home country where the actual cost of living for a family is twice that, she knew she was making more money than the family she supported, and dollars she sent home would go a lot further. Working off of trust with her employer given her illiteracy, it took some time for her to realize that something was not right. It wasn’t until she met kind-hearted and justice-oriented members of the Filipino community in Portland that she realized the truth about the exploitative working conditions she was in.
Maria now knows what she experienced all those years wasn’t a benevolent employer or her countrypeople looking out for her best interest. There can be no doubt that her employer, a well-established businessperson and community leader in Portland, intentionally evaded labor laws without regard for Maria and her family. Well aware of Maria’s precarious situation and deep drive to provide for her family, the employer deliberately deceived and obscured Maria’s rights from her.
The employer took advantage of Maria and preyed upon her illiteracy and lack of connections as a new migrant. When another caregiver in the same care home sued the employer for violations in the workplace and won, the employer intimidated Maria and pressured her into signing a statement promising to never sue the employer. Maria’s employer made certain Maria knew the power and influence they had in the community, whether real or perceived. The employer took Maria to see all the many homes and businesses they owned, and at one point even brandished a photo of themself with Hillary Clinton proclaiming, “Look who I’m friends with. You don’t want to cross me.”
I have had the honor of meeting Maria several times as she is a long-beloved member of my community. Maria is a caring, joyful, and warm person whose love for her family back home extends to the residents she cares for and to our shared community. I have been with Maria during those lightbulb moments when she realized that what her employer did to her was neither lawful nor acceptable. At first Maria was afraid to speak up, but now she understands her rights and wants to make sure this doesn’t happen to any of our kababayan. Moreover, Maria now has an understanding of the importance of sama-samang pagkilos, or collective action, in upholding the dignity and rights of fellow Filipino migrant workers. I’ve been inspired to fight for, with, and alongside Maria. Today, hundreds of community members in Portland are committed to backing up Maria and our greater migrant community as we seek justice and accountability for the harm and injustice that’s been willingly done to them.
Maria’s experience is just one example of many stories of wage theft being experienced by Filipino caregivers in the Portland, Oregon area. What makes these stories even more egregious and unjust is that known cases of wage theft are being committed by Filipino employers who are well aware of the vulnerability of the Filipino caregiver employees they are taking advantage of. While Maria’s case may seem isolated, it highlights a broader pattern of extreme exploitation, compounded by peonage, a system of debt servitude. Filipino caregivers often endure difficult conditions at their workplaces without speaking up for change, as they are in dire need of jobs to support their families. In many cases, caregivers may find themselves needing more money than they earn, prompting them to request advances or incur debts with their employers. Maria’s experience of borrowing from her employer to cover unexpected expenses, and even health-related expenses due to her work, is a form of modern-day slavery where caregivers are forced to work under exploitative conditions, trapped by their debt. This is a situation that can be prevented if caregivers’ wages are not stolen from them in the first place. Instead, the stolen wages by employers are transformed into debt to the employers. Maria, for instance, tolerated her harsh workplace conditions largely out of fear of losing her job and housing. This mix of wage theft and peonage perpetuates a cycle of involuntary servitude, forcing caregivers to endure mistreatment in silence due to their financial dependency, and continuing the larger systemic cycle of Filipinos being forced to leave our homeland to find economic security.
Like millions of migrants every year, leaving our families is not a choice we want to make. The Philippines has been steeped in political turmoil for hundreds of years embroiled in a colonial tug-of-war amongst several nations that deplete our country of its natural resources. The US and other imperialist nations grab land from peasants and distribute it to foreign multinationals, who then charge rent to those who have been tilling the land for generations. This forces our families into an economic system that exploits our labor and then tells us, “you should just be grateful to have a job.”
Unfortunately, Maria’s story is not unique. The #1 export of the Philippines is its people and this has been the case for over 50 years. My parents had to leave their own families behind in the Philippines in the early 1970s because of bad economic conditions, not enough jobs, and the coming declaration of Martial Law. As new immigrants in the US, they experienced job insecurity and employment discrimination. I grew up immersed in the vibrant Filipino immigrant community in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended weekend celebrations, annual summer picnics, and meetings with Annac ti Batac, Diablo Valley Filipino American League, and other Filipino organizations. My parents taught me the importance of serving the Filipino community and fighting injustice, and I have dedicated my life as a public health epidemiologist and researcher to this work. As an expert in health equity and the social determinants of health, I know for a fact that wage theft and other labor abuses not only perpetuate poverty and economic inequity but can lead to and exacerbate mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and stress and chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Forced migration like what we see in the Philippines and the family separation it causes also causes and exacerbates the same issues. This is in addition to the physical toll that caregiving has on the bodies of caregivers. The conditions that Maria’s employer and other employers with illegal labor practices are creating are not only unjust, they are a public health issue.
My family and Maria’s story is an all too common story for migrants from developing (ie exploited) countries moving to developed (ie exploiter) countries seeking work. The criminalization of migration only worsens their conditions, as migrants are put into even more desperate situations that allow them to be further taken advantage of, like in the case of Maria’s employer. We are living in a country that has been exponentially increasing the conditions that people must obey in order to access rights and freedoms and has been using fear to intimidate and control people. But this is exactly the time we need to truly understand what is happening and the concrete conditions facing migrants like Maria and other migrant workers and families, and fight alongside, with, and for them. Maria has given us an opportunity to be on the side that fights for justice and the rights of migrant workers and our families, giving current and future generations a chance to live, work, grow, and thrive with dignity and respect.
###
