By Severino C. Samonte
Did you know that when some of the Filipino labor force began leaving to find jobs in other countries, such groups of workers were simply called overseas contract workers (OCWs) instead of overseas Filipino workers or OFWs, like today?
This can be gleaned from a section of the 1994 Philippine Yearbook published in April 1995 by the former National Statistics Office (NSO), now the Philippine Statistics Authority or PSA.
Then NSO Administrator Tomas Africa said the yearbook was the 12th in a series of annual reports published by the NSO to provide the readers, both local and foreign, with a detailed socioeconomic profile of the country.
It included a special feature that focused on human development, an important aspect of the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) of the administration of then President Fidel V. Ramos (June 30, 1992-June 30, 1998).
Each of the key government departments and agencies — dealing with such indicators as agriculture and fisheries, economy, budget, and banking, defense and law enforcement, demography, education, health and welfare, labor and employment, mining and minerals, trade, transportation, etc. — contributed articles and narratives highlighting their achievements and contributions to the country’s economic development and progress.
In its narration in the yearbook, particularly in Chapter 15 titled: “Labor, Overseas Employment and Emigration,” the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) traced the beginning of Filipino labor migration.
It said there are two mainstreams of manpower outflow from the country. The first is permanent migration, wherein workers leave on a more or less permanent basis, and the second is a contract or temporary migration, a case of contractual employment for a definite period of time with the workers intending to return to their home country after contract termination.
The movement of Filipino workers in the first category can be traced to the early 1900s when Hawaii experienced a severe shortage of plantation workers. The Philippines, then an American colony, was the source of cheap labor.
The United States was the main market for Filipino overseas workers and, by the late 1930s, Filipinos comprised about 70 percent of Hawaii’s plantation labor as well as a significant percentage of California’s grape, apple, and orange-picking population.
The next wave of contract migration came after World War II when Filipino contractors and laborers participated in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of American strongholds such as Guam, Okinawa and Wake Island.
The outbreak of the Korean and Vietnam wars later institutionalized Filipino participation in many US defense and war-related civilian projects.
At the same time, manpower markets began opening up in Borneo, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Canada also provided an alternative destination for professional and medical personnel who sought permanent migration to the North American continent.
In the 1970s, then Labor Secretary Blas F. Ople suggested to then President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. that it was time for the government to begin contract migration to the Middle East. Fueled by the development boom resulting from increased oil prices, oil-producing Arab countries started requiring skilled manpower more than their indigenous population could supply.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) said the processed overseas contract workers increased from 314,234 in 1982 to 598,769 in 1990, most of them bound for the Middle East. Of the total, 468,591 were land-based workers and 130,178 were sea-based.
In the mid-1990s, there was a revision in the acronym OCWs to OFWs or overseas Filipino workers upon the initiative of then President Fidel V. Ramos “to highlight that Filipinos abroad are not only overseas contract workers but also expatriates and highly-skilled individuals with high-paying jobs coveted by large corporations.”
In the 2021 book “Behind the Red Pen” written by veteran writer and former presidential reporter Jojo T. Terencio, the late former president was quoted as saying: “We should institutionalize the use of ‘OFW’ to refer to Filipinos working overseas. It is more inclusive.”
