6/8/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly place and nature of work allows the government closer monitoring of foreign employers and helps keep our entertainers away from prostitution fronts and other worksites associated with unsavory, immoral, illegal or exploitative practices. Parenthetically, none of these issuances appear to us, by any stretch of the imagination, even remotely unreasonable or arbitrary. They address a felt need of according greater protection for an oft-exploited segment of our OCW's. They respond to the industry's demand for clearer and more practicable rules and guidelines. Many of these provisions were fleshed out following recommendations by, and after consultations with, the affected sectors and non-government organizations. On the whole, they are aimed at enhancing the safety and security of entertainers and artists bound for Japan and other destinations, without stifling the industry's concerns for expansion and growth. In any event, apart from the State's police power, the Constitution itself mandates government to extend the fullest protection to our overseas workers. The basic constitutional statement on labor, embodied in Section 18 of Article II of the Constitution provides: Sec. 18. The State affirms labor as a primary social economic force. It shall protect the rights of workers and promote their welfare. More emphatically, the social justice provision on labor of the 1987 Constitution in its first paragraph states: The State shall afford full protection to labor, local and overseas, organized and unorganized and promote full employment and equality of employment opportunities for all. Obviously, protection to labor does not indicate promotion of employment alone. Under the welfare and social justice provisions of the Constitution, the promotion of full employment, while desirable, cannot take a backseat to the government's constitutional duty to provide mechanisms for the protection of our workforce, local or overseas. As this Court explained in Philippine Association of Service Exporters (PASEI) v. Drilon,[11] in reference to the recurring problems faced by our overseas workers: What concerns the Constitution more paramountly is that such an employment be above all, decent, just, and humane. It is bad enough that the country has to send its sons and daughters to strange lands because it cannot satisfy their employment needs at home. Under these circumstances, the Government is duty-bound to insure that our toiling expatriates have adequate protection, personally and economically, while away from home. We now go to petitioners' assertion that the police power cannot, nevertheless, abridge the right of our performing workers to return to work abroad after having earlier qualified under the old process, because, having previously been accredited, their accreditation became a property right," protected by the due process clause. We find this contention untenable. A profession, trade or calling is a property right within the meaning of our constitutional guarantees. One cannot be deprived of the right to work and the right to make a living because these rights are property rights, the arbitrary and unwarranted deprivation of elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/34037 5/8