Last year, workers in
Philippines faced severe challenges in their wages, benefits and working
conditions as they were caught in the vise of economic difficulties brought
about by the cost-of-living crisis and escalating intramurals between the two
leading political dynasties in
the country.
Demands for wage adjustment
While the average inflation
of 3.2% in 2024 was almost half compared to 2023, it continued to erode the
purchasing power of wages. Relatively higher food prices also
disproportionately hurt minimum wage earners and informal workers with 4.3%
inflation for the bottom 30% of the income households. Thus, the demand for
another round of minimum wage increases in 2024 was a recurring theme for
organized labor. The campaign for a wage hike was two-pronged with wage bills
for a PhP 150 (USD 2.58) increase filed in parliament and at the regional wage
boards.
The Senate
approved a P100 (USD 1.72) increase in the minimum wage in February 2024. This
advance was a result of organized labor successfully leveraging the rift
between the upper and lower houses of parliament over the latest move to amend
the Constitution. The Senate stood pat against charter change and instead
enacted the salary increase. However, the reverse was the case in the House of
Representatives.
Despite conducting hearings on pending wage hike bills, the House Labor
Committee sat on the proposal and basically killed it. In contrast with this
inaction on the workers’ demand for a wage adjustment, the House of
Representatives was fast and furious with parliamentary hearings on the drug
war and extra-judicial killings during former President Rodrigo Duterte’s
administration and the investigation on the controversial budget of the Office
of Vice President Sara Duterte and the Department of Education during her
tenure.
The year ended with no
legislated wage hike but with wage orders for several regions. Notwithstanding
the wage orders, minimum wages in all the regions—including those which
increased—remained below the official poverty line. Even though the threshold
was assailed for being too low—as the controversy over the official daily food
budget revealed. With the wage boards perpetuating a system of poverty wages,
calls for the abolition of the regionalized wage mechanism became popular.
Fight over public health
insurance
On another front, organized
labor and civil society allies fought a defensive war to keep the funds of Philhealth—the
public health insurance system—devoted to improving benefits services to
members and providing services for indigents as mandated by the Universal
Health Care law. PhP 60 billion (USD 1.03 billion) of Philhealth’s funds were
transferred by President Bong Bong Marcos Jr. to fund unprogrammed items in the
national budget before the Supreme Court in October stopped the last tranche of
PhP 29.9 billion (USD 0.51 billion). The Nagkaisa (United) labor coalition was
an intervenor in the Supreme Court case to oppose the transfer of PhP 90
billion (USD 1.55 billion) of Philhealth funds to the National Treasury.
Another battle erupted in
December when the Congressional bicameral conference committee removed the
subsidy for Philhealth along with cuts in other social services. The labor
coalition Nagkaisa led protests in key cities, including a major rally in the
capital, to call for the restoration of the Philhealth subsidy and social
services budget. But President Marcos Jr. did not heed the popular clamor as he
signed the national budget by year end with the much-assailed budget insertions
for political patronage funds kept intact. Among these was PhP 26 billion (USD
0.45 billion) in unprogrammed budget items which has been criticized as funding
for electoral patronage and tagged as the brainchild of House Speaker and
presidential cousin Martin Romualdez. This means that formal and informal
workers will now have to beg politicians for assistance for medical and other
emergencies instead of getting health insurance as a right. As if on cue, the election
commission allowed the distribution of patronage projects even during the
midterm elections this year—breaking with the long-established rule of
prohibiting the disbursement of public money during the campaign period since
such is easily exploited as a means for vote buying.
Prospects for the year
The start of the year greets
workers with a higher social security contribution of 5% to be deducted from
their wages. This will result in lower take-home pay for private sector
laborers. To keep the social security system afloat while easing the burden on
workers, the government should subsidize the employee share. This is a tough
ask as the Marcos Jr. administration would rather have workers and the poor
solicit patronage from politicians. This promises to be another plank of
organized labor’s demand for quality public services and universal social
protection.
Even as demands for higher
pay, lower prices, more jobs and decent work remain very popular issues during
the election period, prospects are bleak that the polls will result in positive
outcomes for workers given that political dynasties—which are evolving from fat
to obese—dominate
the landscape. Workers have no allies either in the two main political
dynasties—the Marcoses and the Dutertes—which will be fighting for supremacy in
the coming May 2025 polls.
Continuing recent trends,
many labor-based groups have been eased out of the party list system as
it has been swamped by electoral vehicles for politicians who cannot compete in
district polls. The party list system has warped into just another pathway for
members of obese dynasties to enter the House of Representatives through the
backdoor.
Nonetheless, groups such as
Partido Manggagawa (PM) are engaging with local candidates for the
establishment of public laundromats and whole day childcare centers to ease the
care burdens of employed and unemployed women. Along with such low-hanging fruits,
PM also is campaigning for the passage of the Prevention of Adolescent
Pregnancy bill in response to the crisis level of teenage mothers. Against the
tide of sleek TV and FB ads of national candidates, PM is conducting
information dissemination in working-class communities during the elections for
what it calls “Apat na Dapat” (Four Demands): wage hike, regular jobs, social
services and national sovereignty.
Workers will have to endure
worse economic difficulties as political infighting heightens in 2025 and the
remaining years of the Marcos Jr. administration. Nonetheless, this situation
also motivates organized labor to engage with public outrage over wanton
government corruption and dynastic political dominance. A big multi-sectoral
rally this month promises to jumpstart a robust movement for good governance,
in which workers’ demands should be embedded and integral.
By Judy Ann Miranda, Secretary
General of Partido Manggagawa and a labor feminist.
