TWO members of the left-leaning Makabayan Bloc on Saturday challenged Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and other proponents of the proposed Salary Standardization Law to live off the salary of government employees from the lowest salary grade.
“We dare Secretary Abad and the proponents of the SSL 2015 to live off the lowest salary grade. Since they are forcing our people to make do with this miniscule salary, perhaps its high time that these unfeeling bureaucrats of the Aquino administration be given a dose of their own medicine,” Bayan Muna Party-list Rep. Carlos Zarate said.
Zarate, one of the rabid critics of the Aquino administration, described the SSL 2015 embodied in House Bill 6268 as “grossly inequitable, and a distortion of the wage hike.”
The proposed P226-billion four-year “Salary Standardization Law of 2015” was passed on second reading last Wednesday night after a single hearing by the House committee on appropriations on the same day.
Proponents of the measure said the pay hike shall be carried out in four tranches over four years starting January 2016.
As stated in the proposed measure, the 14th month pay or mid-year bonus, in addition to the present year-end bonus or 13th month pay, will account for an 8-percent increase in annual salary. The PBB shall be equivalent to 1 to 2 months basic salary or an 8 to 16 percent increase depending on the employee’s position.
But Zarate said the Palace-backed SSL proposal embodied in House Bill 6268 is lopsided in favor of top executives.
“It is the ordinary workers definitely need a wage hike, because current wages are way below the cost of living. But they are provided a marginal wage increase from the Malacañang SSL. It is not the president and other top brass who need or deserve more than their current salary,” Zarate said.
Zarate pointed out that a paltry 11.68 percent amounting to P2,068 increase will be received by government employees under Salary Grade 1, which currently receives P9,000. On the other hand, for government executives, pay increase are 76.96 percent, he said. For the president, in Salary Grade 33, pay increase is at 233.12 percent.
For his part, House Minority Leader Neri Colmenares, also of Bayan Muna, said that the wage increase should be based on the family living wage, and not the prevailing “market” wages.
“The object of a wage increase is for employees to cope with the rising cost of commodities, healthcare, and education, and allow our workers to live decently and perform their roles in public service with dignity,” Colmenares said.
“The insistence of Secretary Abad and Malacañang that wages must follow ‘market’ wages is a disfiguring the whole point of the SSL, because the private sector is wringing its workers dry in low wages,” Colmenares said.
He said public school teachers, nurses, and other rank-and-file employees will receive the lowest share in salary increases in Aquino’s SSL.
“We call for a substantial and meaningful basic pay increase for ordinary government workers,” Colmenares said.
Colmenares lamented that ordinary government workers will only get 20-percent increase in the next four years, discounting that the cost of living may rise in the next four years. On the other hand, he said, members of Congress will get a 157-percent increase.
“This is unjust. It will increase the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor. I hope our colleagues in Congress will find ways to correct this injustice,” Colmenares said.