“If the trade unions and federations are now asking for higher wages and more benefits, the least the government should do is to allow them to ventilate their grievances”
TODAY, as expected, various labor groups, particularly those identified with the militant ones, are likely to hold marches and rallies in Metro Manila and other urban centers to demand wage hikes amid higher prices of basic goods and services.
They have the right to ask government to protect their interests and welfare.
Here are the pertinent provisions of the 1987 Constitution (Section 18, Article 2): “The State affirms labor as a primary social economic force. It shall protect the right of workers and promote their welfare.”
Further on, in Section 3 Article 13, the fundamental law says that labor “shall be entitled to security of tenure, humane conditions of work, and a living wage. They shall also participate in policy and decision-making processes affecting their rights and benefits as may be provided by law.”
Labor groups are therefore well within their right to ask for a legislated wage increase since the Regional Wage Boards composed of representatives from government, employers and labor groups have been able to grant only paltry wage increases that workers insist do not allow them to cope with hard times.
The labor sector is now asking the government anew to grant an across-the-board hike in the daily minimum wage.
The biggest labor organization in the country, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, recently urged the House of Representatives to pass House Bill 7871 or the Wage Recovery Act mandating an across-the-board ₱150 wage increase for all private sector workers.
The TUCP wants legislators to heed the sentiments of economists who acted as resource persons in recent committee hearings on the wage hike proposal.
Other voices are already calling for a wage hike. Social Weather Stations president Mahar Mangahas believes the minimum wage system is not working because “real wages are stagnant and not increasing.”
Economist Emmanuel Leyco slammed 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.”
Benjamin Velasco of the UP School of Labor and Industrial Relations said “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.”
He added “the purported link between wage hikes and price hikes is grossly exaggerated, if not entirely fallacious.”
The Ateneo Policy Center avers that the current minimum wage of P610 in NCR and as low as P361 in BARMM is “clearly inadequate” to meet the needs of poor Filipinos.
Given these, will our lawmakers be amenable to a legislated wage increase, or simply give way to employers’ groups that have consistently raised objections to any wage increase at all, claiming massive closures of mainly small and medium size enterprises?
The unrest among a significant section of the Filipino working class is not surprising.
The ordinary factory worker who earns the minimum wage can barely support a family.
Workers in the public transport sector threaten strikes because they bring home a measly amount owing to the continued surge in oil prices.
And workers in both the public and private sectors must invariably contend with higher prices of basic consumer goods.
If the trade unions and federations are now asking for higher wages and more benefits, the least the government should do is to allow them to ventilate their grievances.
After all, Labor Day is a day for honoring the working class and recognizing their contributions to the national economy.
We join the rest of the nation in paying tribute to the Filipino working class for asserting their economic and political rights on Labor Day and keeping the Philippine economy afloat despite less than ideal economic and political circumstances.
As Filipino workers find common cause with their counterparts in other parts of the world on May Day, they actually seek to break free from the fetters of poverty and despair, and to reclaim their dignity and pride as human beings as they struggle for a just, fair and equitable society. (Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)