The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) on Monday called on the current administration to heed the call of private sector workers for a wage increase in the same way President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. increased government workers’ pay.
The TUCP, the country’s largest labor center, points out that the increase in public sector workers’ wages should be matched by a long-overdue and much-deserved raise in private sector workers’ wages.
The TUCP vows to push for the passage of House Bill No. 7871, also known as the Wage Recovery Act, which seeks to give a daily across-the-board P150 wage hike for all workers in the private sector.
While the TUCP lauded the President for issuing Executive Order No. 64 increasing the salaries of and granting additional allowance to government workers, the labor group expressed the hope that the government will grant the private workers petition for an increase.
After the last tranche of the Salary Standardization Law in 2023, this is a much-needed raise for our workers in the public sector to cope with the incessantly soaring prices of basic commodities and services driven by food inflation, especially rice, and electricity inflation.
The TUCP trusts that the President’s leadership in raising the wages of government workers will be mirrored by the House of Representatives led by Speaker Martin Romualdez by prioritizing the immediate passage of the P150 across-the-board wage hike bill.
Amid global and domestic headwinds raising the cost of living for our people, the TUCP sees Presidential approval of a wage hike for government workers and the Congressional approval of a wage hike for private sector workers as the only hope to lift all boats and uplift the lives and livelihood of every Filipino working family.
