5/28/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly the deployment of Filipino overseas workers, whether land-based or sea-based, by local service contractors and manning agencies employing them shall be encouraged. Appropriate incentives may be extended to them.”[9] [Underscoring supplied] Thus, the Act recognizes that to encourage greater deployment efforts, “incentives” can be given, BUT, to service contractors and manning agencies ONLY.[10] Contractors’ and agencies’ principals, i.e., the foreign employers in whose behalf the contractors and agencies recruit OFWs are not among those to whom incentives can be given as they are not mentioned at all in the Act.[11] Of particular importance to the present case is Section 10 of R.A. No. 8042 which governs the OFWs’ money claims.[12] Pursuant to its terms, the Act obviously protects the OFW as against the employer and the recruitment agency in cases of unlawful termination of service. Unfortunately, it limits the liability to the “reimbursement of the placement fee and interest, and the payment of his salaries for the unexpired portion of his employment contract or for three (3) months for every year of the unexpired term, whichever is less.”[13] This limitation is a step backward as it imposes a cap on the liability of the foreign principal/employer and the contractor/recruitment agency even as it earlier declared their liability joint and solidary.[14] To be an “appropriate incentive,” this limitation of liability can only be justified under the terms of the law, i.e., “the incentive must necessarily relate to the law’s purpose with reasonable expectation that it would serve this purpose; it must also accrue to its intended beneficiaries (the recruitment/placement agencies), and not to parties to whom the reason for the grant does not apply.”[15] Viewed in this light, the subject clause can only pass constitutional muster if it shows: (1) a lawful purpose; and (2) lawful means to achieve the lawful purpose. On the lawful purpose requirement, the policy of extending incentives to local service contractors and manning agencies to encourage greater efforts at securing work for OFWs is, undeniably, constitutionally valid. There is nothing inherently unconstitutional in providing such incentives for not only are local service contractors and manning agencies significant stakeholders in the government’s overseas employment program;[16] the Constitution itself also expressly recognizes “the right of labor to its just share in the fruits of production and the right to reasonable returns on investments, and expansion and growth.”[17] [Underscoring supplied] On the lawful means requirement, i.e., whether the means employed to achieve the purpose of encouraging recruitment efforts (through the incentive granted of limiting the liability of recruitment/manning agencies for illegal dismissals) is reasonable, the subject clause obviously fails. First, as I pointed out in my Serrano Opinion, Section 10 of R.A. No. 8042 provides measures that collectively protect OFWs, i.e., by ensuring the integrity of their elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/57319 35/39