Government or employers asked to shoulder hike in SSS employee share

Amid the criticism over the scheduled 1% hike in Social Security System (SSS) contributions starting this year, the labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) called on either the government or employers to shoulder the increase in employee share for the current year.

 

“The increase in employee share for SSS contributions will result in lower take-home pay at a time when workers face extreme economic difficulties due to the cost-of-living crisis. In contrast, the government and capitalists have the capacity to pay. The least they could do is to lighten the burden for workers in the new year,” stated Rene Magtubo, PM national chair and a Marikina City councilor.

 

Several groups and individuals have called for the suspension of the scheduled SSS contribution adjustment in view of the economic burden on workers and pending reforms in SSS, such as the failure to collect unpaid remittances from employers.

 

It was reported yesterday that the Commission on Audit (COA) cited SSS for its inability to gather some PhP 89 billion in collectibles from almost half a million employers. The COA called this “weak performance by the SSS in collecting premiums.”

 

Magtubo said that “These employers who deduct social security contributions but do not remit them to the SSS are misbehaving and criminal, or pasaway. Simply, it is wage theft. It is time that SSS wage a war on pasaway employers.”

 

He added that “Capitalists are more than solvent as they have increased their share in the fruits of production in the last 15 years of robust economic growth. Real wages have been stagnant in that period of 50% labor productivity rise. This implies an expansion of capital share, or profit in other words.”

 

Magtubo concluded that “Alternatively, the government can also subsidize the employee share in the meantime. A large share of government revenues come from workers’ withholding taxes anyway. Formal workers disproportionately bear the burden of taxation in the country. Workers’ payroll taxes are automatically deducted while corporate taxes are dependent on the declaration of capitalists. This is a double standard.”

January 6, 2025