5/28/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly workers”[121] because it already justifies differentiated treatment in terms of the computation of money claims.[122] Likewise, the jurisdictional and enforcement issues on overseas workers’ money claims do not justify a differentiated treatment in the computation of their money claims.[123] If anything, these issues justify an equal, if not greater protection and assistance to overseas workers who generally are more prone to exploitation given their physical distance from our government. We also find that the classifications are not relevant to the purpose of the law, which is to “establish a higher standard of protection and promotion of the welfare of migrant workers, their families and overseas Filipinos in distress, and for other purposes.”[124] Further, we find specious the argument that reducing the liability of placement agencies “redounds to the benefit of the [overseas] workers.”[125] Putting a cap on the money claims of certain overseas workers does not increase the standard of protection afforded to them. On the other hand, foreign employers are more incentivized by the reinstated clause to enter into contracts of at least a year because it gives them more flexibility to violate our overseas workers’ rights. Their liability for arbitrarily terminating overseas workers is decreased at the expense of the workers whose rights they violated. Meanwhile, these overseas workers who are impressed with an expectation of a stable job overseas for the longer contract period disregard other opportunities only to be terminated earlier. They are left with claims that are less than what others in the same situation would receive. The reinstated clause, therefore, creates a situation where the law meant to protect them makes violation of rights easier and simply benign to the violator. As Justice Brion said in his concurring opinion in Serrano: Section 10 of R.A. No. 8042 affects these well-laid rules and measures, and in fact provides a hidden twist affecting the principal/employer’s liability. While intended as an incentive accruing to recruitment/manning agencies, the law, as worded, simply limits the OFWs’ recovery in wrongful dismissal situations. Thus, it redounds to the benefit of whoever may be liable, including the principal/employer – the direct employer primarily liable for the wrongful dismissal. In this sense, Section 10 – read as a grant of incentives to recruitment/manning agencies – oversteps what it aims to do by effectively limiting what is otherwise the full liability of the foreign principals/employers. Section 10, in short, really operates to benefit the wrong party and allows that party, without justifiable reason, to mitigate its liability for wrongful dismissals. Because of this hidden twist, the limitation of liability under Section 10 cannot be an “appropriate” incentive, to borrow the term that R.A. No. 8042 itself uses to describe the incentive it envisions under its purpose clause. What worsens the situation is the chosen mode of granting the incentive: instead of a grant that, to encourage greater efforts at recruitment, is elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/57319 16/39