A lawmaker on Thursday called for an urgent increase on workers’ wages as fuel pump prices soared for the seventh consecutive week, and with regional minimum wages stuck to their current levels for the last four years.
Assistant Minority Leader and Gabriela Party-list Rep. Arlene Brosas said Filipino workers need an immediate wage hike amid nonstop price hikes and depressed incomes.
“We find the inaction of Regional Tripartite Wage and Productivity Boards [RTWPB] and the Duterte regime extremely insulting to the cries of Filipino families amid spiraling prices and effects of prolonged pandemic restrictions,” she added.
The Gabriela Party-list lawmaker said daily minimum wage in the National Capital Region (NCR) has remained stuck at P537 for over four years now.
Also, she said number of jobless Filipinos has reached 3.27 million in December despite the easing of restrictions on business operations and mobility.
“Small and micro enterprises which cannot grant minimum wage increases should be assisted by the national government through continuing wage subsidy programs. As for big companies, they must be compelled to initiate the granting of salary hikes,” said Brosas.
The lawmaker said presidential bets should support the legislation of a P750 national minimum wage, which will correct the “highly skewed” wage levels in the country and raise the overall income of Filipino workers across regions.
Last month, Partido Manggagawa (PM) said the minimum wage earners could no longer make ends meet as the prices of basic goods and services continue to increase even during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the majority of the minimum wage rates remain unchanged from 2020 as the Covid-19 disrupted the operations of many businesses.
PM Secretary-General Judy Miranda said workers have already waited long enough and should now get “direct wage increases combined with price discounts, social security subsidies and public services provisioning.”
“We should remember that many workers, many of them women, are paid even less than the minimum. In the NCR, there are 1 million minimum wage earners but more than 800,000 workers paid below the minimum,” Miranda said, citing October 2020 data from the Philippine Statistics Authority.
“It is worse nationwide: 2.4 million minimum wage earners but 8 million paid below the minimum,” she added.
As of January 2022, the National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC) none of the 16 RTWPBs have yet to receive a new wage petition.