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

Labor Yearender: Workers are in the frontlines of a fight against the pandemic of rights violations

 

Without a doubt, covid-19 has gravely affected everyone, rich and poor, employer and worker. Still, workers and the poor are the ones who have been disproportionately impacted. The double-digit economic recessions in the second and third quarters of this year has been felt as grinding poverty and daily hunger by 7 million Filipino families as revealed in the SWS survey in September.

 

The Philippine economy is in worse shape compared to its neighbors is due to the harsh and long lockdown. It is the authoritarian response of the Duterte administration that is to blame for the economic recession and the adverse effect on the working class. The administration was late in forming a response and once it did, it treated the pandemic—similar to how it treated the drug addiction—as a peace and order concern instead of a public health matter. The severe lockdown shuttered the economy, and left workers and the poor without jobs and livelihood for months on end. The aid provided by the government reached only 3 million households out of 16 million Filipinos who were temporarily jobless during the lockdown. Today 4.5 million are unemployed and 2.2 million more are out of work but are not officially jobless only because they stopped looking for employment.

 

To make matters worse, employers used the pandemic as an opportunity to deny workers their benefits and their rights. Workers were put on floating status for more than the six months allowed by law. Establishments reopened but replaced regular workers with new hires on endo status. Some employers shutdown their firms without paying workers separation and other benefits. Capitalist Grinches are exploiting the pandemic to bust unions as shown by the experience of the Arcya Glass Employees Union in Laguna and the First Glory labor union in the Mactan ecozone.

 

While the pandemic of rights violations spread, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) exercised social distancing from workers. The DOLE released a series of orders and advisories that denigrated labor standards and rights. Labor Advisory 17 allowed employers to cut wages and benefits as long as workers will agree. But workers were left with no choice but to bite the bullet of wage cuts as the DOLE suspended the filing of complaints under DO 213. Labor groups called on the DOLE to dialogue but were repeatedly denied. Meanwhile the government banned protests and arrested those who tried using the pandemic as an alibi. In one incident, the picketline of Sejung Apparel  workers in the First Cavite Industrial Estate was dispersed by police and guards in the middle of Black Friday night for allegedly violating quarantine rules. With workers strikes and street protests effectively banned, Congress railroaded the Anti-Terror Law.

                                    

But workers are fighting back and are in the frontlines of the struggle to reclaim their rights. The Arcya Glass workers spent their holidays in the picketlines to protest the continued operation of the factory despite allegedly being permanently closed. The First Glory labor union has voted to go on strike to demand the reinstatement of 300 fired workers. Labor groups in the Philippines together with international union federations have formed the Caucus of Global Unions Pilipinas to call for the repeal of the Anti-Terror Law on pain of the country losing its trade privileges with Europe. Workers in four big factories in the Mactan ecozone have organized into unions as a result of recent grievances over lack of aid during the pandemic and long-running issues over wages and benefits. Certifications elections are due to be held next year in the four firms. We predict that 2021 will see a resurgence of workers’ actions to defend democratic freedoms and labor rights.

December 29, 2020

Wealth of PH 1% can feed entire nation – Partido Manggagawa

PRESS RELEASE

23 January 2015

 

Their number can hardly fill up a bus but the combined wealth of the country’s richest families can easily feed the entire nation.

 

This reality, the Partido Manggagawa (PM) said, can help explain the unreturned query of Glyzelle Palomar to Pope Francis on why only few people come to their help.

 

PM said Glyzelle was definitely not referring to the country’s 1% as the few good Samaritans but to the few likely neighbors that occasionally come to their aid. 

 

“Now it can be explained to Glyzelle that with just half of their estimated wealth of $74 billion (Php 3.2 trillion) in 2014, the country’s Richest 50[1] can actually provide 17 to 24 million families the basic minimum requirements of daily living for one year,” explained PM spokesman Wilson Fortaleza.

 

There are about 12 million Filipino families who consider themselves poor based on the latest survey by the Social Weather Station (SWS).  Government statistics, however, put the number of families in extreme poverty to only 4.2 million in 2012.[2]

 

The same report points out that in 2012, a Filipino family of five needed Php 7,890 to meet its basic food and non-food requirements every month.  For food alone it needs Php 5,513. 

 

Based on these estimates, a family of five needs at least Php 94,680 in one year to keep themselves above the poverty threshold or Php 66,156 to beat the food threshold. 

 

Fortaleza expounded that assuming the richest 50 gave up only half of their wealth which is equivalent to Php 1.6 trillion out of compassion for the poor, that can easily translate to 17 million families surviving poverty in one year or 24 million families surviving the food threshold. 

 

With an average size of 4.6 members, the Philippines has about 22 million families.

 

The labor group explained further that the combined wealth of the richest 50 is equivalent to five years salary for about 5 million minimum wage earners in the National Capital Region. 

 

But Fortaleza was quick to point out that this kind of scenario will never work out since in reality, it is the super rich that feeds on the hard labor and meagre income of poor Filipinos. 

 

The Forbes’ list of Philippines richest 50 showed families in oligopolistic control of the country’s vital industries such as power, water, telecommunications and transportation, banking and finance, farmlands and real estates, construction, highways, mining, hotels and restaurants, media and entertainment, and even in services like schools and hospitals.

 

Fortaleza pointed out that common issues against the capitalist owners of these industries include labor contractualization; high cost of their products and services; organized fraud with their capture of regulatory agencies; and their control of political power through sponsorship of political parties to actual bribery.

 

PM came up with its own assumptions also to echo Oxfam’s analysis that the richest 1% is gaining control of more than half of the world’s wealth by 2016.  The latter released its report on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where world leaders talk mainly about business and other global concerns.

 

Fortaleza said that similarly, the richest 50 in the Philippines is getting a bigger slice (almost a third) of country’s gross domestic product as their wealth increased by 428%, from $14 billion in 2008 to $74 billion in 2014.   

 

The Philippine GDP, according to the World Bank, was estimated to value $272 billion in 2013. ###

---

[1] www.forbes.com/philippines

[2] NSCB - Despite rise in the number of families, extreme poverty among families remains steady at 1.6 million in 2012—NSCB 

Arroyo gov’t accused of hiding real state of unemployment in the country

PRESS RELEASE
14 May 2009

The militant labor party-list group, Partido ng Manggagawa (PM), demanded official explanations from the Arroyo government on why there was such a large gap between the official survey results conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) on unemployment and the one conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS).

According to PM chair Renato Magtubo, the very large gap between the 34.2% adult unemployment rate in SWS’ February 2009 survey and the 7.7% unemployment rate in NSO’s January 2009 survey warrants an explanation because such a large difference in representative numbers might lead to the discovery of an awful truth: that government employment statistics do not reveal the truth.

The SWS survey also revealed that compared with previous administrations, the Arroyo administration has the highest adult unemployment rate, from 8.4% in March 2001 to 34.2% in February 2009. The Ramos administration had a 14.6% in September 1993 down to 8.8% in March 1998. The Estrada administration had 10.0% in July 1998 slightly up to 11.5% a month before his downfall in January 2001.

“Based on this SWS record, it is under the Arroyo administration that the country’s unemployment rate is in ‘record-high’ and she was the same President who promised to create 10 million jobs under her term,” recalled Magtubo.

In actual numbers, the SWS survey results showed some 14 million unemployed adult persons (18 years and above) in February compared to only 2.85 million (15 years and above) in NSO’s January survey.

The SWS survey also showed that some 12% (or 1.68 million of the 14 million unemployed) were due to retrenchment or non-renewal of contracts. At the onset of the global financial crisis, the labor group has been raising doubts on the veracity of government’s report on mass layoffs.

“Obviously there are 11 million unemployed Filipinos here who were either out of NSO radars during the survey period or were recorded as employed during that one month difference,” lamented Magtubo who maintains the view that the unemployment figures in the country are being “doctored” or altered to hide the sad state of the economy.

The labor leader argued further that even if the 15-17 age group which is missing in the SWS sample is included, that age bracket can hardly inflate that big difference since the same NSO data showed that for every 10 unemployed persons, 5 or 49.2% belong to the age group 15-24. This means that out of NSO’s 2.85 million total unemployed persons, only 1.4 million belong to age group 15-24.

“Will the government explain this? Were there 11 million Filipinos who where out of coverage during the NSO survey but who were present during the SWS survey a month later. Or there was an official instruction to cover up or hide the real numbers to save someone’s face?,” asked Magtubo.

The former partly-list representative added that the labor movement has been very critical of the government’s methodology in reporting employment statistics as numbers usually do not reflect the actual situation in the real world.

“The government has for several times changed the employment definition which in effect reduced the number of unemployed by more than a million in official statistics since 2005, but not in the actual numbers of Filipinos who are definitely out of work,” concludes Magtubo who agreed with the SWS findings that the country’s unemployment rate were not lower than 20% since 2005.

Militant groups rally, tells govt to focus on more basic problems and not Cha-cha

GMANews.TV
12/09/2008 12:08 PM

MANILA, Philippines - Militant workers and urban poor on Tuesday started a two-day protest demonstration as they marched from Las Piñas City to Baclaran to oppose moves to push Charter change.

In a statement, Partido ng Manggagawa said members from various militant groups started the march 8 a.m. to the Redemptionist Church in Baclaran where they were met by other groups from depressed communities of Manila's Tondo district and the cities of Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas, and Valenzuela.

The group will then march to the Department of Labor and Employment via Taft Avenue where participants from Caloocan, Bulacan and Rizal are expected to join them. At 6:00 p.m. the protesters will hold a noise barrage at the Welcome Rotonda.

The labor groups are expected to make an overnight vigil and then merge with farmers’ groups that will troop to the Batasang Pambansa on Wednesday.

Partido ng Manggagawa Secretary- General Judy Ann Miranda said instead of focusing on Charter change, the government should first address more basic concerns to help the poor cope with the global economic crisis.

"The reduction in self-rated poverty revealed in the SWS survey does not mean the government is doing its job well. In fact it is doing its job badly and so the people are just reducing their standard of living as a coping mechanism. Rather than focusing on Cha-cha in order to remove the protectionist provisions of the constitution, the government must instead prioritize protection for the workers and the poor so they could deal with the global crisis," Miranda said.

The group also echoed calls for the continuation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Miranda said that the government should also consider coming up with a "stimulus package" that may include a subsidy to all private sector workers, government employees and OFW's who will be laid off due to the crisis that should last until they are re-employed up to a maximum of six months.

In addition, she urged the government to declare a tax rebate for all workers equivalent to two months wage as well as a public employment program for over four million unemployed Filipinos.

Tha protest rally will be a prelude to the anti-Charter change rally scheduled on December 10 in Makati City which will be participated by Catholic bishops, Labor union groups, militant groups, transport groups and students. - Mikhaela De Leon, GMANews.TV

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/138335/Militant-groups-rally-tells-govt-to-focus-on-more-basic-problems-and-not-Cha-cha