Wage hike needed asap to solve rising hunger and poverty

Photo from Time

 

The labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) called for a wage hike across the country in response to the rising incidence of hunger and poverty revealed in the latest Social Weather Station survey. “A legislated P100 nationwide across-the-board wage hike is a key component of a set of solutions to worsening hunger and poverty in our country. Kailangan pa bang i-memorize yan,” stated Rene Magtubo, PM national chair and a Marikina city councilor.

 

The latest Social Weather Station (SWS) survey showed that hunger incidence in December 2022 rose to 11.8% which is equivalent to 3 million families, up from 11.3% in October 2022 or 2.89 million families experiencing involuntary hunger. The same SWS survey also uncovered that poverty incidence climbed to 51% from 49% which translates to 12.9 million families rating themselves as poor, an increase of 300,000 families from October to December 2022.

 

“It is definitely not rocket science to understand that increasing household incomes by raising the wages of family breadwinners will mitigate hunger and poverty. Wage hikes together with ayuda and forms of social protection like universal pensions and employment guarantees will radically decrease hunger and poverty in the face of a cost of living crisis expressed by runaway prices of onions, eggs and other essential necessities,” Magtubo explained.

 

He added that “The only roadblock to a salary increase is employer resistance and government insensitivity. Their argument that wage hikes only benefit formal workers to the detriment of informal workers who are the vast majority is fake news. Research by the ILO and others find that minimum wage hikes have negligible effect on unemployment and instead have a lighthouse effect. Meaning, minimum wage hikes increase the wages even of the informally employed since it becomes socially unacceptable to pay lower salaries.”

 

In early December, a P100 “wage increase for wage recovery” petition was filed by the Kapatiran ng mga Unyon at Samahang Manggagawa and PM before the NCR Wage Board. No action has yet been taken on the wage petition.

 

“We call on Congress to legislate a P100 across-the-board salary increase for all workers as relief from the inflation shock,” declared Magtubo. PM stated that P81 has been eroded from the P570 minimum wage in Metro Manila as a result of the continuous rise in prices. 

Inflation in December 2022 reached 8.1%, slightly higher than the 8.0% in November. Notably, inflation is higher in areas outside Metro Manila. The consumer price index for December 2022 in Metro Manila was 116.6 while areas outside it was 120.1 according to statistical tables released today by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). PM’s demand for a wage hike is based on a computation by the group using the PSA data. 

January 20, 2023

Partido Manggagawa