Spartz+Annotation+5

Annotation #5 10/10/12 //Modern Day Slaves//

The movie //Modern Day Slaves// was written by Ted Unarce and released in 2009. Its primary goal was to draw attention to the poor lifestyles of overseas foreign workers (OFWs), specifically those whose home is in the Philippines. While I had a hard time understanding why this film was considered to be focused on sustainability, I came to the conclusion that unless societies took note of and cared for all of their resources, even people, they can’t become sustainable. There were quite a few numbers presented during the course of the movie, but it was clear that the main way the argument was going to be sustained was through an emotional connection with the viewers. The problem was that when they attempted to re-enact certain problems the OFWs faced, it was obvious that the film was faked. While I don’t doubt that there are migrant workers that get mistreated, the fact that all of the re-enactments were in English and seemed very scripted, did not help the documentary defend its argument. I would think that there are few people who could watch the movie and not have trouble believing what was presented. I think that it was geared towards people who had no idea about the mistreatments of OFWs, but even then I doubt that they would take the movie as seriously as Unarce would have wanted. Of course that can’t be entirely true if one looks at the number of awards the film has one at the various film festivals it has been presented at (GTC).

The argument focused on economic, organizational and cultural problems that allow this issue to escalate. 52% of people in the Philippines are unemployed which results in the major export of the country to be labor. People cannot make money in the country so they go overseas where on average they can make 500% more than they would be able to make otherwise and send money back home. There are problems associated with this however. If a worker wanted to be hired by someone overseas, they need to go through a hiring agency that is going to charge training fees that put workers in even more debt than they were previously in. These debts can sometimes be 5 to 7 months worth of wages according to the filmmakers. These organizations that are supposedly helping people find work are really putting more stress on families. The problem escalates further when one considers that the government isn’t doing anything to help the people that make up the “nation of servants”. The government in the Philippines does not have a foreign labor policy, so workers are not protected at home or overseas. This breakdown of organization allows for cultural issues to come in. Workers are so dependent on the money that they are bringing in for their families that they will put up with much abuse just to have a steady paycheck. This does not create a productive work environment that would allow someone to work to their fullest potential. I don’t think the movie offered much in the way of possible to corrections to the situation other than these governments needing to take responsibility for the protection of their citizens. So long as these governments continue to sit back and just focus on the money coming into the country instead of focusing on the condition of their citizens, the problem will never be fixed and these workers will continue to be taken advantage of.

The most compelling part of the argument seemed to be the numbers presented. The scale of the numbers being presented showed how dependent some of these countries are on OFWs for income and how if those jobs are harming citizens, sources of income may be in jeopardy. The problem is that there were major issues that almost caused me to completely overlook those numbers and write-off the film as over dramatized. This was the case for both the re-enactments and the dubbing for the people who didn’t speak English. If the film had left out the re-enactments, I think the film would have been much more believable as a piece of media.

I was curious about what actually existed for the foreign labor policy in the Philippines. The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration seems to be in charge of the overseas workers and the agencies that send workers there. The problem is that on their page it seems to suggest that there isn’t anywhere a worker can go to complain about their employer. There is a group that will hear them out (Adjudication Office) but they seem to focus primarily on harmful employment agencies and the workers who have violated their contracts. This seems to suggest that all of the problems come from the Filipino side of things which I feel should not be an automatic assumption. I’m not saying that all employers are going to abuse their workers, but they need to at least accept the possibility (DLE). The other question I had was who is Ted Unarce because I was curious about how he came to feel that this was something that he needed to spend time working on. According to his website he just has a desire to educate people on under studied social issues that the common person may not be aware of and is responsible for multiple films that bring to light social inequalities (TedUnarce).

References: “Biography.” TedUnarce.com. Accessed: 10/10/12. Updated: 2012. <[]>. “Hiring Filipino Workers.” Department of Labor and Employment, Republic of the Philippines. Accessed: 10/10/12. Updated: 8/18/11. < []>. “Modern Day Slaves.” GTC Films Production. Accessed: 10/10/12. Updated: 2009. <[]>.