All workers will benefit from a wage hike—Partido Manggagawa

 

Contrary to the claims of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) that only 10% of “formal workers” will benefit from the P100 wage hike bill pending at the Senate, the group Partido Manggagawa (PM) asserted that all workers, formal and informal, will gain whether directly or indirectly.

 

“Minimum wage earners will get the P100 wage hike in full. Other workers in the formal sector will gain a portion of P100 through what is called wage distortion—wages above the minimum will have to be adjusted since the floor was raised. And workers in the informal economy will also benefit since formal workers with more purchasing power will patronize their products and services. It is ordinary wage earners—not rich professionals or capitalists—who buy from street vendors, eat in carinderias, ride jeepneys and tricycles, and purchase farmers’ and fishers’ produce in wet markets. In fact, formal and informal workers live together as one family so how can they not enjoy the wage hike?,” explained Rene Magtubo, PM national chair and a Marikina City councilor.

 

He lambasted Sergio Ortiz-Luis of ECOP “for feigning concern for workers when in truth he just doesn’t want profits reduced through a wage hike.”

 

“Ortiz-Luis is peddling fake news. Let us be evidence-based with the numbers. The latest Labor Force Survey shows that 49.2%, about half, of the total 50.5 million labor force, are 24.8 million workers employed in private firms. Of which, one fifth or 4.1 million are minimum wage earners. Another 13.8 million workers, about a quarter or 27.4% of the labor force, are self-employed with no employees. Majority of them are informal workers like street vendors and tricycle drivers while a minority are middle-class professionals like doctors and lawyers. Therefore, three quarters of the labor force or more than 30 million workers stand to benefit from a wage hike. Ortiz-Luis is being disingenuous as he is actually defending the interests of the one million employers or 2% of the labor force,” Magtubo expounded.

 

He added that “In fact, even employers will in the end take advantage of a wage hike as aggregate demand in the economy will rise. Workers’ wages are entirely consumed to buy their families’ necessities, unlike capitalists who hoard part of their profits as savings or use it to obtain luxuries from abroad. This is what happened for the past two years: the economy prospered, and inflation and unemployment went on a decline after two successive minimum wage hikes in all regions, except Davao Region in 2023. Wage hikes are good, not bad, for the economy and all workers.” 

February 18, 2024