spot_img
28.3 C
Philippines
Thursday, March 28, 2024

TUCP sets wage increase petition, Congress moves to back request

- Advertisement -

The country’s biggest labor group said Friday it will seek a wage hike next week, as Congress moved to legislate an increase in the minimum wage.

In the House, the chairman of the ways and means committee, Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, urged President Duterte to increase wages before he steps down in June, saying that the minimum wage in Metro Manila has not moved in five years, leaving working Filipinos “severely, almost embarrassingly unprepared for the price hikes to come this year.”

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said it would file a wage petition on March 14 amid skyrocketing fuel prices.
In a statement Friday, TUCP president Raymond Mendoza said they are now determining the appropriate amount to seek before the wage boards.

“The TUCP is studying the matter deeply given the gravity of the gap between the minimum wage and the cost of living confronting our workers. We trust that government understands the urgency of the situation of our workers and will now look to the necessity of addressing the workers’ survival concerns during these dangerous and perilous times through genuine policy measures that bring down the cost of living and by providing a living wage – to save jobs and save lives,” Mendoza said.

The group lauded the Department of Labor and Employment’s (DOLE) order for wage boards across the country to review current pay rates for private sector workers.

- Advertisement -

“We hope that is not just a mere ruse or strategy to diffuse growing tensions and the heightening unease as millions of Filipinos now face a survival problem,” Mendoza said.

He said the current wage rates are now “extremely inadequate.”

“We remind the government that there have been no wage increases in the past two years, and in other regions, no wage hike has been granted at all in the past three years, even as the buying power of the Philippine peso has been significantly eroded in the face of inflation,” he added.

He believed that the significant wage adjustments should have been done as early as 2019, a year before the pandemic.

“When we last filed in the regional wage boards for a daily wage increase, we petitioned for a daily wage increase of anywhere from P600 to P900, depending on the region. Our petitions were premised on the need to provide at least a once-a-day nutritious meal for a family of five,” he added.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello earlier said the fuel price hikes which have been worsened by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine may be a “compelling ground for the wage boards to recommend adjustments in the minimum wages of workers.”

However, he said a wage adjustment must be done carefully to strike a balance between the needs of workers and the viability of companies that employ them.

In the House, the chairman of the committee on labor and employment pushed for an increase in the wages of workers against the backdrop of rising prices and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a statement on Friday, 1-PACMAN Party-list Rep. Enrico Pineda said his panel will be discussing the possibility of wage increases and continuing its deliberations over measures seeking to institutionalize a national minimum wage for private sector workers by next week.

“It’s high time we raise the minimum wage, considering the rising costs of goods and the effects of the pandemic,” Pineda said.

House Bill (HB) Nos. 246, 276, 541, 668, 2878, 6668, 6752, which all propose to amend the Labor Code of the Philippines to institutionalize a national minimum wage for private sector workers, will be part of the meeting’s agenda on March 17.

He said the prices of basic goods and services continued to increase even during the pandemic while the wage rates remained unchanged.

“The effect of the rising gas prices is that everything also goes up. Further, additional expenses are now necessary due to the pandemic. People need to buy masks, vitamins, disinfecting materials and spend on testing. How do we expect our workers to keep up without any increase in their salaries?” Pineda said.

He said the measures were initially discussed by the committee on labor and employment in February 2020, before the onset of the pandemic in the Philippines and the implementation of community quarantines.

However, no agreement was reached because several issues still need further discussion.

“We will open deliberations once again also so that we can have some discussions on the feasibility of raising the minimum wage through the National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC). All stakeholders will be invited so that they may be able to participate and air their concerns. Our aim always is to strike a balance between labor and management, while also putting importance on the welfare of workers,” Pineda said.

On Wednesday, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said he has ordered all wage boards across the country to look into the need to increase the salaries of workers amid soaring oil prices.

Salceda, chairman of the House committee on ways and means, said there has been no increase in the minimum wage for the past five years in Metro Manila.

“Sadly, the National Capital Region wage drives the needle for wages in the country, and NCR has seen no minimum wage increase since 2018. That leaves ordinary, working-class Filipinos totally unprepared for the price hikes that will inevitably come due to rising oil prices,” Salceda said.

Salceda said the NCR minimum wage of P537 a day is now worth just P464 in 2018 prices.

“That means that today’s NCR minimum wage would be able to buy P73 less in goods in 2018. That is grossly unfair to the working class,” Salceda said.

“I understand the hesitation against increasing the minimum wage. It could bring business costs up and reduce economic activity. But people who make that argument tend to forget that workers are consumers, and when consumers have more money to spend, they spend more on businesses,” Salceda added.

“The 2021 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded for work that challenged the theory that higher minimum wages depresses employment. The idea that higher minimum wages are bad for jobs does not respect the fact that consumers are workers, and consumers need better wages to do more spending on businesses. So, I am very skeptical about claims by certain businesses that they will be forced to lay workers off if we raise minimum wages,” Salceda said.

“Besides, increasing wages is the right thing to do at this point. The burden of price hikes has to be shared between workers and their employers. Shared pain and shared benefits is the principle of a working economy,” he added.

Salceda said he will endorse the petitions for wage hikes to Bello “to argue the economic case for raising the minimum wage.”

- Advertisement -

LATEST NEWS

Popular Articles