The P25 wage hike for Metro Manila
workers was criticized by the labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) as a “Halloween
trick that will result in a libing wage instead of a living wage.” The
Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) announced that the NCR wage
board had agreed on the amount although Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello did not
confirm the alleged decision.
“Whether P20 or P25, the wage hike for
NCR workers is an epic fail and falls below all expectations by workers,”
insisted Wilson Fortaleza, spokesperson of PM. The group’s cost of living
estimate for a family of five in Metro Manila is around P1,300 a day, more than
double the current minimum wage of P512.
“First, P25 is short by 30% to make up
for the P35.84 erosion in wages due to the 7% inflation in the NCR recorded in
August this year. This means real wages or the amount of goods and services that
workers can buy has fallen even with a wage hike,” Fortaleza explained.
He added that “Second, employers still
owe workers for the stagnation in real wages despite 50% productivity growth
from 2001 to 2016. Even if the NCR wage board had ordered a P35.84 wage hike,
it still means real wages are just frozen. But workers should partake of a just
share in the fruits of production as mandated by the Constitution.”
“A concrete example of this injustice is the plight
of workers of the cigarette giant Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco Corp. (PMFTC).
Workers met all their key performance indicators and yet 310 employees were
retrenched in August. The
Lucio Tan group of companies reported a total income of P 3.63B for the first
quarter of this year and 65 percent or P 2.35B came from PMFTC. The company’s reward for increased labor productivity was mass layoff!,”
Fortaleza said.
He averred that “Finally, President
Duterte has broken his promise to abolish what he calls provincial wages.
Instead his administration is reaffirming the disastrous policy of wage
regionalization. Cost of living is not significantly different across regions
and cities but wage differentials vary greatly and by as much as 45% (the
difference between the NCR rate of P512 and the ARMM rate of P280). Like ending
endo, abolition of regional wages lies in the heap of Duterte’s broken
promises.”
November 1, 2018
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