PSA’s 9.7% Poverty Figure Masks the Real Wage Crisis: Prosperous on Paper, Poor in Reality - Partido Manggagawa

Partido Manggagawa welcomes any genuine reduction in poverty, but the government’s celebration of a “single-digit” 9.7% poverty rate for 2025 cannot be separated from the reality millions of Filipino workers are still living: prosperous on paper, poor in reality.

 

The PSA’s own poverty threshold — P14,634 a month for a family of five — is the problem. A worker earning barely above this line is instantly reclassified as “non-poor,” even while unable to afford decent housing, transportation, healthcare, or education. This is not poverty alleviation. This is poverty redefinition.

 

And by the government’s own numbers, most regional wage boards can’t even clear that low bar. NWPC’s own summary of current wage orders, as of August 5, 2026, shows minimum wages in nearly every region outside Metro Manila falling below PSA’s national poverty threshold — even when converted to a full month’s pay for a single worker with no dependents to share the burden. 

 

In BARMM, the country’s lowest-paid region, the daily minimum wage of P411 to P436 translates to just P10,686 to P11,336 a month — up to 27% below what the government itself says a family of five needs to escape poverty. 

 

Workers in Region XII, Zamboanga Peninsula, Eastern Visayas, and Caraga fare little better, all logging wages 15-18% below the poverty line. Even Western Visayas and Davao, mid-tier regions, fall short.

 

And these are the legal minimums — the floor, not the reality for every worker. Contractualization, informal employment, and outright non-compliance mean many Filipino workers take home even less than what these wage orders mandate. 

 

Worse, even the poverty threshold itself is a low bar. IBON Foundation estimates the actual family living wage nationwide at roughly P1,305 a day, or about P28,380 a month — nearly double the government’s poverty line. By that measure, no region in the country, including NCR, pays its workers enough to live decently, only to avoid being counted as poor.

 

This is the regional wage board system working exactly as designed — and exactly as broken. Regional wage fixing under Republic Act 6727, the Wage Rationalization Act of 1989, is 37 years old this year. Nearly four decades in, the system has produced not living wages but a hierarchy of poverty wages, with entire regions officially condemned to earn less than what the government itself defines as the poverty line.

 

DEPDev Secretary Balisacan credits nominal income gains outpacing inflation for the national poverty improvement. But that national figure hides a harder truth: region after region, the minimum wage itself is a poverty wage, set by boards operating under a 37-year-old law that was never designed to keep pace with the real cost of living.

 

This is precisely why the fight over Wage Order NCR-27 matters now more than ever. While the government spins record-low poverty numbers, the Pasig RTC injunction continues to block a wage increase that workers in Metro Manila desperately need. If workers in the capital region are under siege, imagine the regions already left behind.

 

Partido Manggagawa reiterates its call: 

- Lift the injunction on Wage Order NCR-27. 

- Abolish the regional wage board system. Legislate a national minimum wage indexed to the actual cost of living.                                     

 

Numbers on a PSA table mean nothing to a mother deciding between rice and rent — whether in Metro Manila or in BARMM.

 

PRESS RELEASE

22 August 2026

PM Marks Ninoy Aquino Day, Links Martial Law’s Ghosts to Today’s Ghost Projects and Political Dynasties

The nation marks the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. today — a crime whose full circumstances remain unresolved to this day. For the Partido Manggagawa, this should not be a day of ceremony and long weekends alone. It should be a day of reckoning: which parts of the old system of plunder and impunity are still with us, and who continues to pay the price?

 

“Ninoy was killed because he tried to end a system that thrives on unaccountable power. Forty-three years later, that same system survives — no longer in the form of a corrupt dictatorship, but in the form of systemic corruption and proliferation of political dynasties,” said Ka Rene Magtubo, Chairperson of the Partido Manggagawa. 

 

Department of Finance data shows the Philippine economy lost between P42.3 billion and P118.5 billion to “ghost” flood control projects from 2023 to 2025. For his part, Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson disclosed that a total of ₱1.939 trillion for flood control programs spanning three administrations from 2011 to 2025 was allocated by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and supposes that around 35% to 40% of this multi-trillion-peso fund may have been lost to systemic corruption.

 

“Hundreds of thousands of jobs could have been created and better public services provided to our people had the funds not been stolen,” stressed Magtubo.

 

Compounding the theft, 67 members of Congress were themselves contractors on their own state-funded projects in 2022 — a conflict of interest the system allowed to operate in plain sight. “This is the real twin defect in our governance: the very officials tasked with safeguarding public funds are the ones profiting from them,” said Magtubo. 

 

“It mirrors exactly what the Pasig RTC is now doing against Wage Order 27 — an authority meant to uphold the law instead of violating it,” Magtubo added, referring to the pending injunction against the NCR minimum wage increase. 

 

The scandal also exposes a deeper structural rot: there is no genuine political freedom while political dynasties dominate every branch of government. Many of the officials, contractors, and enablers named in the flood control probe are bound by family ties spanning Congress, local government, and the contracting industry itself — allowing public funds to be recycled within the same clans instead of reaching the public they are meant to serve. 

 

This is precisely why Partido Manggagawa has long pushed for a genuine anti-political dynasty law: without it, elections change faces, but not the families who control both the public purse and public policy. 

 

Magtubo stressed that every peso stolen through ghost projects is a peso denied to social services, decent wages, and effective labor law enforcement. “While business groups and some officials claim the economy ‘cannot afford’ a wage hike, billions of pesos continue flowing into phantom projects that deliver nothing concrete for the people. That is where public anger belongs — not against workers simply asking for a wage that covers daily survival.” 

 

The Partido Manggagawa is calling for: 

 

§ Full accountability for those involved in the flood control scam — not only lawyers and lower-level staff, but the principals in Congress and the executive branch; 

§ Abolition of the “allocables” funding system that remains open to the same abuse; 

§ Passage of a genuine anti-political dynasty law, to break the family monopolies over public office and public funds that make scandals like this possible; 

§ Immediate lifting of the injunction against Wage Order 27, as proof that government prioritizes workers over businesses fearful of a wage increase; 

§ Legislation of a national minimum wage that removes the process from wage boards easily influenced by the same interests behind the ghost projects. 

 

“Remembering Ninoy should not end with fighting for political freedom. It must also include the fight for economic freedom — against corruption, against poverty, and against a system that continues to impoverish workers while enriching the few,” Magtubo concluded.

PRESS RELEASE

21 August 2026

 

Wage Hike Injunction, Metro Floods Sending Workers Deeper to a Life of Poverty

 

Photo from Manila Collegian

A combination of days without work due to flooding with the non-implementation of the ₱60 wage hike (first tranche) due to court injunction is making life harder for minimum wage workers in the National Capital Region (NCR), Partido Manggagawa (PM) said in a statement Tuesday.

 

“The 1.1 million minimum wage workers in NCR are losing ₱66,000,000.00 a day from the Pasig court’s unjust imposition of injunction against the ₱60 wage hike. Add another day without work due to flooding for the same number of workers and the loss reaches a staggering ₱764,500,000.00 (₱695 present minimum wage x 1.1 million workers),” explained PM Chair Renato Magtubo.

 

Magtubo explained further that unlike Judge Manongsong, a government employee who keeps her salary intact when work in government is suspended due to bad weather, private sector workers get no pay under the principle of ‘no-work-no pay’.

 

“Kaya nga ‘imortal’ ang tawag sa mga manggagawa sa pribadong sektor sa ganitong mga panahon dahil sinusuong nila ang panganib at mas kinatatakutan nilang mawalan ng kita sa isang araw kaysa mabasa o lumubog sa baha,” said Magtubo.

 

The group stressed that this combination of labor injustice and climate crisis is a burden both lawmakers and the President must address at the policy level as well as in program implementation as the principle of check and balance between the co-equal branches of government doesn’t undermine the worker’s right to life and the rising standard of living.

 

Magtubo added: “This life and injustice completely escaped the mind of Judge Manongsong when she did the unimaginable issuance of TRO and injunction against the P85 wage hike.”

 

“Hindi kayang i-dismiss ni Judge Manongsong and pagbuhos ng ulan at baha, pero kaya nitong i-dismiss ang petisyon ng dalawang kapitalista lalo na at walang hurisdiksyon ang kanyang korte sa usapin ng sweldo,” said Magtubo.

 

Labor groups were pressing for the lifting of the court injunction against the ₱85 wage hike injunction before the Supreme Court, at the same time calling for Congress to rectify decades of labor injustice by abolishing the provincial rate system with the enactment of the ₱200 wage hike and the National Minimum Wage Law. 

 

PRESS RELEASE

18 August 2026

EMPLOYERS HAVE NO RIGHT TO CRY “DUE PROCESS” AFTER SKIPPING WAGE BOARD HEARINGS

 

Partido Manggagawa (PM) Chairperson Renato “Ka Rene” Magtubo today condemned the Pasig Regional Trial Court’s injunction against NCR Wage Order No. 27, calling it an illegal intrusion into a process that belongs solely to the wage boards. 

 

“Absent sa hearing ng NCR Wage Board, tapos kay Judge Manongsong nagpakanlong?” complained Magtubo.

 

Magtubo, former PM partylist representative and now a Marikina City Councilor, also slammed petitioner-employers — Readycon Trading and Construction Corp and R-II Builders - for skipping RTWPB consultations and public hearings, then running to court. 

 

“They skipped the venue the law required them to attend. They bypassed the NWPC, their proper forum. Now they claim due process and forum-shop in the regular courts. You cannot refuse to speak, then cry you were not heard,” he said. 

 

Citing Articles 123 and 126 of the Labor Code, Magtubo said the law bars regular courts from stopping wage order proceedings. Exclusive jurisdiction lies with the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board and the National Wages and Productivity Commission. 

 

“The law is clear. The Pasig RTC injunction is a plain jurisdictional defect, not a legal remedy,” he said. 

 

Magtubo argued further that Wage Order No. 27 gives workers only an ₱85 increase — ₱60 in July 25 and ₱20 in January 2027. Even with this, wages remain far below the ₱1,300 a day a family of five needs in NCR. And yet even this meager relief is being strangled in the regular courts,” he said. 

 

He warned that the delay directly hurts workers who followed the legal process. “Every month this injunction drags on is a month of stolen wages. If employers can use regular courts to indefinitely suspend a wage board decision, where do workers go to claim a right the law already granted?” 

 

Magtubo also urged Congress to amend Articles 123 and 126 to penalize courts that entertain such injunctions and to fast-track their dismissal. 

 

“Beyond patching the law, this proves the regional wage board system is too slow and too vulnerable. It is time Congress legislates a national minimum wage indexed to the cost of living — insulated from legal harassment and court interference,” concluded Magtubo.

 

PRESS RELEASE 

August 14, 2026 

 

PM condemns Pasig judge’s forever TRO

 

The labor group Partido Manggagawa slammed the decision of Pasig Regional Trial Court Judge Marie Joyce Manongsong to grant the employers’ petition for a writ of preliminary injunction against the implementation of the P85 wage order for minimum wage earners in the National Capital Region.

 

“Judge Manongsong’s forever TRO deprives at least a million minimum earners from benefiting from the recent wage order. The forever TRO suspends the wage hike for workers and gives capitalists a profit increase. Pinalawig ng preliminary injunction ang pagKAKAMALi ni Manongsong na patawan ng TRO ang wage order, bagay na singlinaw ng sikat ng araw ay di maaring gawin ayon sa Labor Code at Wage Rationalization Act,” asserted Rene Magtubo.

 

Magtubo argued that “If just two employers can afford to post a P10 billion bond then why can’t all the NCR-based capitalists afford to pay the P60 first tranche? P10 billion is enough to pay the P60 wage increase for 1.1 million minimum wage earners for a total of 151 days or almost 6 working months. Capitalists have the capacity to pay the wage hike. But they are so greedy and don’t want their profits reduced.”

 

Magtubo called the workers in Metro Manila and the whole country to express their outrage at the forever TRO against the wage hike. “Judges and employers, not just in NCR but in other regions, can always invent legal arguments against the wage hike and for a profit increase. Workers should wage an extra-legal battle to win a wage increase!”

Press Release

Partido Manggagawa