A major labor organization with a party-list group in the House of Representatives has claimed that several sectors rallied behind its proposal for a P150-legislated wage increase.
Deputy Speaker Raymond Democrito Mendoza, president of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, batted for the speedy passage of House Bill 7871 or the Wage Recovery Act mandating an across-the-board ₱150 wage increase for all private sector workers.
Mendoza, in a statement, recalled that during the second hearing of the House Committee on Labor and Employment last month, “a diverse array of esteemed voices from academia, civil society, informal sector, economists, and minimum wage earners shed light on the imperative of raising workers’ wages.
“They shared compelling testimonies and expert insights in support of the TUCP’s proposed ₱150 legislated wage hike,” he noted.
During the hearing, Margarita Refaldo of the Association of Minimum Wage Earners appealed to the panel chaired by Montalban-San Mateo Rep. Fidel Nograles saying, “we are not asking for much, but for what is only unequivocally right and just for each and every minimum wage earner who do honest hard work and contribute to the growth of our economy”
Highlighting the minimum wage earners’ struggle to keep pace and fail to cope with the increase in the cost of living, Mahar Mangahas, president of the Social Weather Stations (SWS), delivered a scathing indictment of the current minimum wage system.
“The minimum wage system is not working because the real wages are stagnant and not increasing,” he said.
Emmanuel Leyco, an economist who was president of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Manila (PLM) and social welfare undersecretary, refuted the argument that wage hikes kill businesses and jobs.
“There is no record of closures because of wage increases. There are records of closures not because the wages increased, but because the competitiveness of certain businesses, simply, is not sustainable anymore,” he pointed out.
Benjamin Velasco of the University of the Philippines School of Labor and Industrial Relations (SOLAIR) cited a research shows “wage increases have no impact on employment” and that “given the right set of policies we can achieve the goal of wage recovery for workers and low unemployment.”
The analysis indicates that “the purported link between wage hikes and price hikes is grossly exaggerated, if not entirely fallacious.
Contrary to popular belief, the research discovered that the impact of wage increases on inflation is very small, in fact, insignificant because inflation stems from cost-related factors and supply imbalances, such as energy costs.”
A research by the Ateneo Policy Center, under the guidance of former Ateneo School of Governance Dean Ronald Mendoza, said “it would require a daily budget of around ₱693.30 to be able to afford the main ingredients required to eat the Pinggang Pinoy cheapest healthy plate.”
However, the highest daily minimum wage in the country stands at a mere ₱610 in NCR and plunges as low as ₱361 in BARMM, Mendoza said.
According to him, although the National Wages and Productivity Commission argues that only a minority of regional minimum wages are below the poverty threshold, research associate Gabrielle Mendoza of the Ateneo Policy Center said that the current daily minimum wage is “clearly inadequate” to satisfy the government-prescribed daily healthy food guide called Pinggang Pinoy which propels and perpetuates pandemic-level of poverty, hunger, and stunting among Filipinos, particularly children.