Partido Manggagawa supports P500 subsidy, bats for national minimum wage

 

The labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) declared its support for the proposal by the group ALU-TUCP for a P500 monthly food subsidy for minimum wage earners even as it called for the abolition of the regional wage boards.

Last Friday, the labor coalition Nagkaisa and the KMU held a joint protest at the Department of Labor and Employment main office in Intramuros in criticism of the recent P25 wage increase.

“The P500 subsidy is good as a short term relief but for a long-term alternative, we need to reform the wage fixing mechanism and replace wage regionalization with a national minimum wage indexed to inflation and productivity,” asserted Rene Magtubo, national chair of PM.

He stated that “As we call on organized labor to unite for the P500 subsidy, we further appeal for unity around the demand to abolish the regional wage boards.”

The P500 subsidy proposal came in the wake of the recent P25 wage increase for NCR workers. The salary hike was slammed by labor groups as too small to compensate for the erosion in workers’ wages due to inflation. PM’s cost of living estimate for a family of five in Metro Manila is around P1,300 a day.

PM argues that government and employers representatives have majority control of regional wage boards and they connive to fix wage cheap on the argument of capacity to pay. Magtubo explained that “Labor Sec. Bello himself asserted that pay increases are tempered by the criteria of capacity to pay. Why is it that when employers buy the labor power of workers, their capacity to pay is paramount but when workers buy their daily necessities, their capacity to buy is not considered? This is the double standard of capitalism!”

The group’s criticism is that there are about a hundred minimum wages in the country that are different not just across regions but even across cities and municipalities in industrial areas as Calabarzon and Central Luzon. “Wage differentials vary greatly. The NCR rate of P537 is almost double the ARMM rate of P280. Yet the cost of living is not significantly different across regions, cities and municipalities. What kind of system is this!,” Magtubo claimed. ###

Photos of the DOLE protest against the P25 wage hike can be accessed at PM’s FB page.

November 12, 2018

Wage hike is loose change in face of rising inflation—Calabarzon workers

Calabarzon workers slammed the hike in minimum wages in the region as “loose change that will be wiped out by rising inflation.” Several labor groups active in Calabarzon trooped this afternoon to the main gate of the Cavite Economic Zone, the country’s biggest government-managed export processing zone, to protest low pay and union busting.

The regional wage board in Calabarzon ordered pay hikes of P14 to P21.50 thus increasing minimum wages to P303 to P400 depending on the area. The minimum wage hike takes effect tomorrow. The last wage hike in the region was in July 2016.

“A 4.6% rise in prices will erase the P16.50 minimum wage increase in Rosario. From 2.9% last December, inflation has steadily risen to 4.3% this March. By the time the wage hike is implemented tomorrow, it will not redound to any real wage improvement,” asserted Dennis Sequena, coordinator of the Cavite chapter of Partido Manggagawa (PM).

More than a hundred members of labor groups PM, Sentro, Samahang Nagkakaisa ng Cavite, and Katipunan ng Manggagawang Pilipino picketed the Cavite ecozone. The mass action is also a buildup to the massive labor unity rally of workers for the Labor Day commemoration on Monday.

“Workers in the Cavite ecozone are organizing to improve their wages and working conditions but capitalists are illegally busting unions and harassing workers,” Sequena explained.

Last week, garments factory Dong Seung Inc. at the Cavite ecozone terminated en masse all 16 union officers including the union president. In response, the union filed a notice of strike and a strike vote will be held tomorrow. Yesterday management did not attend the mediation meeting convened by the National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB).

Meanwhile, a complaint for harassment was filed by the union at another apparel company, Jisoo Garments Manufacturing Corp. Jisoo workers are alleging that management is behind a falsification case filed against union officers. The case came just after a certification election was held in the company. Among the grievances of workers at Dong Seung and Jisoo that led to unionization was that salaries for all workers, new or old, including people who have worked for several years, remained stuck at the minimum level.

PM also criticized the two-tiered wage system in Calabarzon for being an instrument for cheapening wages. Sequena insisted that “In the two-tiered system, the minimum wage is just a floor wage that will be supplemented by productivity-based increases. But companies in the Cavite ecozone do not provide for productivity pay hikes even though labor productivity has continuously grown as measured by the annual GDP growth.”

April 27, 2018

Workers challenge presidentiables on wages and jobs issues

Nationwide rallies by labor groups on Bonifacio Day raised the twin workers issues of living wages and regular jobs. With the elections looming, the partylist group Partido Manggagawa (PM) challenged presidential candidates to heed the workers clamor.

Rene Magtubo, PM chair and its partylist bet, stated that “Hinahamon naming ang mga kandidato sa eleksyon: Manggagawa naman! Kung buhay si Andres Bonifacio at si Heneral Luna, masisigaw nila ‘Punyeta ang mababang sahod at mataas na buwis! Punyeta ang kontraktwalisasyon at globalisasyon!’”

Members of PM ripped copies of temporary employment contracts and pay slips with withholding taxes in a symbolic reenactment of Bonifacio’s tearing of the hated cedula that started the Katipunan’s revolution against Spanish colonial rule.

“We condemn the epidemic of contractualization perpetrated by capitalists to demolish labor standards and lambast the government for killing the proposed tax cuts that would have raised the take home pay of workers,” Magtubo argued.

PM joined other workers groups in the Nagkaisa labor coalition in a several thousand-strong march from UST Espana to Mendiola. Mobilizations in cities like Cebu, Bacolod, Tacloban, Davao and General Santos picketed ticketing offices of Philippines Airlines in a show of solidarity for 117 employees who were victims of a recent mass layoff. The union Philippine Airlines Employees Association (PALEA) has a pending notice of strike over the latest retrenchment.

Magtubo explained that “Giving tax breaks to wage earners is not a loss to the government because increased take home pay leads to bigger spending for goods and services. Such will spur growth in manufacturing, agriculture and services sector, and thus enlarge tax collection by the government.”

With the Paris COP21 talks on climate change about to start, the Bonifacio Day appeals by workers also included calls for climate justice, climate jobs and just transition. “Labor’s demand for decent work is integral to adaptation and mitigation as people with regular employment and social insurance are better prepared to face recurring disasters,” Magtubo elaborated.

There was also an internationalist angle to the local celebration of Bonifacio Day as workers of Korean companies based in the country expressed solidarity with the Korean labor movement which has been the subject of raids and arrests by the government of Park Geun-Hye. Placards signed by the workers unions of Tae Sung Phils. in Cavite and KEPCO Cebu read “Solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Korean labor movement! Stop the raids on union offices and arrests of labor leaders! No to state repression!”

PM vowed to continue solidarity actions for the embattled Korean labor movement even as the group criticized Korean companies in the country for union busting and unfair treatment of workers. The partylist group cited the labor disputes at Tae Sung and KEPCO Cebu and also the deaths of dozens of workers at the giant Hanjin shipyard in Subic to buttress its point.

Group slams P13 wage hike in Metro Cebu as starvation wage

Press Release

September 16, 2015

The militant Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) slammed the P13 wage hike for workers in Metro Cebu and called it “starvation wage.” Last week the Region 7 Regional Tripartite and Productivity Board announced the salary increase that excluded workers in the region outside of Metro Cebu.

“The wage board must be joking if it thinks it can dupe workers with an exclusionary and measly pay increase. It is an insult to the groups ALU and Living Wage Coalition which petitioned for P92 and P145 wage increases respectively,” insisted Dennis Derige, PM-Cebu spokesperson.

PM is calling on ALU and the Living Wage Coalition to jointly campaign in protest at the wage board decision and rejection of their wage petitions. The campaign should pressure the National Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board which has to approve the Region 7 wage board decision.

Derige argued that “Did the workers in the rest of Cebu province and Bohol not also suffer from erosion of purchasing power? Don’t they have the same difficulties as workers in Metro Cebu in feeding their families and sending their children to school due to inflation? The wage board’s reason for granting a salary increase in Metro Cebu also holds for all workers in the region.”

“PM’s own study shows that the cost of living in Metro Cebu is around P1,000 for a family of five and yet the new minimum wage adds up to only P353, which will not even buy half of the basket of goods and services,” Derige said.

PM proposes the abolition of the wage boards and their replacement by a Wage Commission. “The mandate of the National Wage Commission will be to fix wages based on the single criterion of cost of living. This is different from the wage boards which are bogged down by convoluted and contradictory 10-point criteria in fixing wages. The Wage Commission should raise the minimum wage to the level of the living wage by a mix of mechanisms such as direct pay increases, tax exemptions, price discounts and social security subsidies for workers,” Derige stated.

He assailed the argument of the wage board that wages outside of Metro Cebu are already too high in comparison to other cities and regions. “Wages in Region 7 are not too high but salaries in other areas are too low. The solution is not to freeze wages outside of Metro Cebu but to provide generous salary hikes to workers in other regions,” he averred.

Derige continued that “This is the ugly reality of inequality in our country. The Philippines is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia yet only a few, the capitalist class, is benefiting from the increased wealth created by the working people. The assets of the ten richest Filipinos amount to some US$50 billion, which is equivalent to the yearly wages of 20 million minimum wage earners.”