The P40 increase in the NCR minimum wage ordered by the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPB) mirrors the state of poverty workers endured exactly one year after and will continue to suffer under the Marcos Jr. administration. This wage growth, to say the least, neither can bring the poverty rate down to 9% by the end of his term nor lift the country up the upper middle-income status by next year as prophesied by his economic managers during his first State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Today’s real value of the adjusted P610 in daily minimum wage is only about P516.51 or even lower than the current nominal wage rate of P570. Also, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) computation of P18,000 new monthly minimum wage for NCR workers was incorrect because it simply multiplied P610 by 30 days when in truth, private sector workers work only for 5 to 6 days per week or 22-26 days per month. That translates to a monthly take home pay of less than P13,420 for those in 5-day workweek and P15,860 for those in 6-day workweek after the mandatory deductions for social security.
To illustrate further, because the regional wage boards do not order another wage hike within a year after the last wage order, the total for one year from this P40 increase in daily wage at 5-day workweek would only amount to P10,560 (P40 x 22 days x 12 months). Again, this annual take from the P40 wage hike is even lower than the 2021 monthly poverty rate of P12,030 in NCR which by the way is far lower than the SWS ‘self-rated’ poverty of 40% of total families in the region.
Accordingly, the P40 wage hike didn’t even meet half of the P100 wage recovery petition of the Kapatiran ng mga Unyon at Samahang Manggagawa (Kapatiran) on the sole basis of soaring inflation. In short, this amount of increase can neither be considered as a sensible measure to address poverty and inequality as this, in any way, does not move wages closer to the social objective of providing our workers a living wage as well as fair share from their growing productivity as provided under the 1987 Constitution.
Malacañang and Congress, therefore, must share the duty of rectifying the mistake of relegating wage determination to the regional wage boards which places workers’ cost-of-living last among the many criteria they consider in determining wage orders. This failure of RTWPBs to go beyond poverty wages now brings us to demand Congress to expedite the passage of the P150 across-the-board wage hike now pending before the two Houses. In addition, our policymakers should now consider repealing RA 6727 which created the RTWPBs and replacing it with a new national mechanism that is more responsive to the social objective of raising the workers standard of living.
Another way for the government to ensure improvements in the living standard of workers is to allow them full freedom in exercising their rights to unionize and negotiate better benefits and working conditions with their employers. These rights, the government fully knows, are grossly undermined by existing security policies such as demonization and red-tagging of union activities by the NTF-ELCAC and on the economic side, the normalization of ‘endo’ and other labor contractualization schemes.
Absent fundamental reforms on these policy areas, the next five years under Marcos will just add another half-decade of misery for the Filipino workers.
30 June 2023
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