5/28/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly We also noted in Serrano that before the passage of Republic Act No. 8042, the money claims of illegally terminated overseas and local workers with fixed-term employment were computed in the same manner.[112] Their money claims were computed based on the “unexpired portions of their contracts.”[113] The adoption of the reinstated clause in Republic Act No. 8042 subjected the money claims of illegally dismissed overseas workers with an unexpired term of at least a year to a cap of three months worth of their salary.[114] There was no such limitation on the money claims of illegally terminated local workers with fixed-term employment.[115] We observed that illegally dismissed overseas workers whose employment contracts had a term of less than one year were granted the amount equivalent to the unexpired portion of their employment contracts.[116] Meanwhile, illegally dismissed overseas workers with employment terms of at least a year were granted a cap equivalent to three months of their salary for the unexpired portions of their contracts.[117] Observing the terminologies used in the clause, we also found that “the subject clause creates a sub-layer of discrimination among OFWs whose contract periods are for more than one year: those who are illegally dismissed with less than one year left in their contracts shall be entitled to their salaries for the entire unexpired portion thereof, while those who are illegally dismissed with one year or more remaining in their contracts shall be covered by the reinstated clause, and their monetary benefits limited to their salaries for three months only.”[118] We do not need strict scrutiny to conclude that these classifications do not rest on any real or substantial distinctions that would justify different treatments in terms of the computation of money claims resulting from illegal termination. Overseas workers regardless of their classifications are entitled to security of tenure, at least for the period agreed upon in their contracts. This means that they cannot be dismissed before the end of their contract terms without due process. If they were illegally dismissed, the workers’ right to security of tenure is violated. The rights violated when, say, a fixed-period local worker is illegally terminated are neither greater than nor less than the rights violated when a fixed-period overseas worker is illegally terminated. It is state policy to protect the rights of workers without qualification as to the place of employment.[119] In both cases, the workers are deprived of their expected salary, which they could have earned had they not been illegally dismissed. For both workers, this deprivation translates to economic insecurity and disparity.[120] The same is true for the distinctions between overseas workers with an employment contract of less than one year and overseas workers with at least one year of employment contract, and between overseas workers with at least a year left in their contracts and overseas workers with less than a year left in their contracts when they were illegally dismissed. For this reason, we cannot subscribe to the argument that “[overseas workers] are contractual employees who can never acquire regular employment status, unlike local elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/57319 15/39