Thousands of Filipino seafarers are now jobless, no thanks to “ambulance chasers” who are making it difficult for shipping companies to hire them.
The 57,000-strong United Filipino Seafarers (UFS), a union of maritime professionals recognized globally, is alarmed by the sharp drop of Filipino seafarer deployments. Records from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration reveal that there were only 387,072 sea-based workers deployed in 2016 compared with last year’s 442,820, an astonishing difference of almost 65,000. This is not just cold statistics written on Excel spreadsheets. This is flesh-and-bone reality where the sustenance of thousands of families are at stake.
UFS President Engr. Nelson Ramirez blames “ambulance chasing”—a nefarious activity where an appellant seeks compensation based on fictitious or frivolous claims of injury. He says the practice has disappointed and disheartened foreign shipowners from further hiring Filipino seafarers. This despicable practice has added to the country’s worsening economic situation, and bloated the number of unemployed maritime graduates each year.
According to Ramirez, compensation claims are determined by arbitrators or arbiters of the National Labor Relations Commission or the National Conciliation and Mediation Board which are both under the Department of Labor and Employment. Claims decided in favor of the complainant are immediately settled after judgment. Refusal to pay, Ramirez says, may result in the garnishment of the shipowners’ and/or the manning agencies’ financial accounts. Little or no recourse is left for recovering the amount paid to the complaining party even though, in some cases, the arbitrator’s judgment may be overturned by the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court.
Labor lawyers of the lowest kind have found the system to be lucrative. Ambulance chasers in cahoots with crooked arbitrators are having a field day enticing credulous seafarers to file claims against their respective employers. These shameless lawyers can easily be spotted hounding emergency rooms and other venues where injured seafarers seek medical assistance. Claimants can get as much as $250,000 depending on the injury. Oftentimes, however, they never get to enjoy the amount of judgment because ambulance chasers have eaten up the bulk.
Says Ramirez: “They are a blight on the maritime industry. Everybody involved in ambulance chasing are blinded by greed—with no thought on how their actions are harming those of us who toil in this industry. Ambulance-chasing lawyers, in particular, are the lowest of the low. They are hyenas ready to pounce on the compensation that is being awarded to seafarers by exploited manning agencies and principals, at percentages that are much higher than the 10 percent commission allowable by law. It’s not unusual for the lawyer to grab as much as 40 percent of the award; that is, in addition to legal fees and other hidden charges that the seafarer has to pay on top of the lawyer’s commission. In the end, it’s the lawyer who ends up getting more money, while the seafarer is left on the hook should the award be overturned.”
Such expensive payouts have pushed shipowners to hire other nationalities in lieu of Filipino sailors. This explains why the Philippines, which used to be the world’s largest supplier of maritime crew, is now in competition with China, Indonesia, India, Myanmar, Russia, Ukraine and Vietnam, among other emerging seafaring counterparts.
Expectedly, most manning agents and shipowners appeal the preposterous decisions of arbiters or arbitrators. In some cases where the decisions are reversed, the seafarers have to give back the awarded disability claims.
“The poor seafarer now has to face the problem of returning the millions of pesos that he was supposed to have received, despite the fact that his ambulance-chasing lawyer has received a majority share of the award. The lawyer, after all, has no liability to reimburse the money, so he does a disappearing act, leaving the seafarer to face the music alone,” Ramirez laments. “Where before, he was all attention and encouragement, now that it’s payback time, there’s nothing but a deafening silence on his part.”
I believe that, as these bogus reparation cases become more ubiquitous, it will have severe implications with possibly irreversible economic costs. As shipowners turn to other labor suppliers, a decline of dollar remittances is very likely. This will also result in fewer employment opportunities for all related services, such as maritime training centers and manning agencies.
Since the 1970s, Filipino seafarers have constituted the single biggest nationality onboard ocean-going vessels worldwide. From bulk carriers to container ships, and from oil tankers to cruise ships, some 387,072 Filipino seafarers are at sea at any given time. Filipino seafarers are on board one out of every four ships in the world. This translates to foreign currency remittances of Filipino seafarers amounting to $5.6 billion for 2016 alone, or 18 percent of all inward remittances of all overseas Filipino workers.
CF Sharp Crew Management President and CEO Miguel Rocha shares the same sentiment. He says that his agency has lost at least 1,000 job openings due to the persistent problem of ambulance chasing and its inherent financial burden: “Filipino maritime professionals are competitive and attractive since they are dependable, hardworking and possess good communication skills and English language proficiency. Due to this, seafarers became a significant work force of the Philippine total labor force, bringing $6-billion remittances into our government coffers. Sadly, things are totally different now.”
It’s about time stakeholders act in concert to eradicate this menace in the maritime industry. They should exert pressure on lawmakers to seek an enduring solution to ambulance chasing, the lowest form of lawyering. The two houses of Congress should formulate an immediate, clear and long-term response to this problem to protect the vast majority of Filipino sailors who are honest and hardworking. Their hard-earned reputation for professionalism, integrity, competence and industriousness are tarnished by the few who fall prey to ambulance-chasing lawyers.
We should not allow the livelihood and well-being of hundreds of thousands in the Filipino seafaring and manning sector, and their respective families, to be compromised by the greed and injustice brought about by shady lawyering.
For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at mvala.v@gmail.com.