Filipino Nurses Support Group
Statement

International Nurses Day and National Nursing Week Statement

May 12, 2007

Vancouver, B.C., Canada – The Filipino Nurses Support Group (FNSG) extends its greetings of solidarity to nurses everywhere on the occasion of International Nurses Day and during National Nursing Week in Canada as we bring forward the struggle of nurses in the Philippines for better wages and working conditions and the growing numbers of Filipino nurses toiling in unwanted jobs across Canada.

Nurses are being celebrated today for their significant contributions in their many important roles in today’s society.  This year’s theme: “Positive practice environments: Quality workplaces = quality patient care” highlights the importance of good working conditions to achieve quality nursing and health care.  The experience of nurses from the Philippines however, is wrought with difficult situations of insufficient income, abuse, racism and discrimination produced by imperialist globalization.

Due to poverty and unemployment in the Philippines, more than 3,000 workers, mostly women, go abroad each day to work.  An estimated nine million or 10% of the population are Overseas Filipino Workers who remit about US$ 14-15 billion to the national economy.  Our labour and lives are heavily burdened as we are increasingly used as cheap, exploited and docile labour so capitalists can rake in more profits.

Among this exodus of people are Filipino nurses who are commodified and exploited to heightening degrees on a global scale.  In line with the Philippine government’s Labour Export Policy (LEP), nursing schools attune their curriculum more and more to meet the needs of Western countries to prepare graduates for jobs abroad.

The present basic pay of government nurses in the Philippines is inadequate to meet the rising cost of living.  In search of better economic opportunities, an estimated 15,000 or 85% of nurses leave the country every year to work abroad either as nurses, caregivers, or domestic helpers.  It is even estimated that 80% of public health physicians have taken up or enrolled in nursing.

Our massive out migration worsens the lack of nurses for health centres and hospitals which is no longer described as a “brain drain”, but a “brain hemorrhage.”

For those who choose Canada as their destination, the promise of a better life is empty since nursing is not granted enough occupational points under the immigration system and our only viable option to enter the country is through the racist and anti-woman Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP).  The LCP is Canada’s cheap substitute to affordable childcare and health care for sick and elderly patients in the community.

Instead of helping to relieve the country’s worsening nursing shortage, many Filipino nurses are stuck in the LCP for 24 months or longer enduring low wages, abusive living and working conditions, and rampant racism and discrimination in the hope of permanently staying in the country.

We challenge the notion of “unethical recruitment” and “poaching” of nurses from poor countries like the Philippines suffering a lack of nurses when federal immigration and provincial professional regulatory bodies show no political will to stop the long-term de-skilling we suffer. Because of costly, lengthy and bureaucratic hurdles, even after completing the LCP, more and more Filipino nurses and doctors are streamed into cleaning, food service, retail and other low-wage jobs that Canadians do not want.

As we mark International Nurses Day and National Nursing Week in Canada, FNSG is committed to educating, organizing, and mobilizing Filipino nurses to rise up and fight for our rights, against racism and discrimination, and towards our full participation in Canadian society.  We reaffirm our commitment to exert all efforts in support of the struggle of the Filipino people for national liberation and democracy and upholding the rights and interests of our Filipino community in Canada.