On 01 May 2024, thousands of workers braved the heat and marched to send a strong message to Batasan and Malacañang: DAGDAG SAHOD ISABATAS! P150 PATAAS! The united clarion call for legislated wage hike, such as the ₱150 across the board legislated wage hike towards living wages, came on the heels of the measure still pending in the House Committee on Labor and Employment and the Labor Day Celebration in the Palace without a dialogue between Labor and President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. after two years into his Administration.
Various trade union centers, labor federations, and workers’ organizations in both the private and public sector led by the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), and Nagkaisa Labor Coalition (Nagkaisa!) united in solidarity as the NATIONAL WAGE COALITION to finally end the vicious cycle of wage injustice, inequality, and poverty gripping millions of Filipino working families.
Since 1989 after the last legislated wage hike, increases made by regional wage boards have been insufficient . For 35 years, workers have struggled to make ends meet. Unless they borrow more and drown deeper in debt, they cannot afford soaring electricity, water, and gas prices. They cannot bring adequate nutritious food to their families’ tables, resulting in malnutrition and stunting of our children and compromising our future workforce.
Without living wages, women workers bear the brunt of unpaid care work at home and gender pay gap at work. Facing both job and income insecurity, young workers in the gig economy suffer from wage dumping even way below the minimum wage with no contract at all. Every year, fresh graduates entering the workforce are stuck at entry-level minimum wages which are not floor wages that protect workers from unduly low pay but a poverty trap that condemns workers to a life of deprivation and starvation.
BARYA-BARYANG MINIMUM NAGSADLAK SA MANGGAGAWA, LALO KABABAIHAN AT KABATAAN, SA KUMUNOY NG KAHIRAPAN!
After four decades of neglect of the Constitutional mandate of living wages, the National Wage Coalition forges ahead in the struggle to press Congress to act now on the legislated wage hike. Passing this ₱150 wage recovery increase is only the first yet pivotal step that the Philippines should take to actualize living wages embodied in proposed legislation for a ₱750 daily wage increase for private sector workers and a new Salary Standardization Law (SSL) anchored on the ₱33,000 monthly minimum wage for public sector workers.
The people who voted our legislators and the President to power have spoken: reduce soaring prices and raise eroding wages! The National Wage Coalition demands the long-overdue dialogue with the President on upholding workers’ right to a living wage and freedom of association. The President should certify as urgent long-pending priority labor legislation, spearheaded by the legislated wage hike and amendments to the Labor Code, particularly ease of union formation, limiting assumption of jurisdiction, and decriminalization of illegal strikes. These are part and parcel of the recommendations of the ILO which will promote an enabling environment for organizing more workers and ensuring that they have a seat at the table to negotiate for better paychecks and benefits with their employers.
KASING-INIT NG PANAHON ANG PANAWAGAN NG URING MANGGAGAWA SA KAGYAT NA TAAS-SAHOD: IPASA NG KONGRESO! PIRMAHAN NG PANGULO!
The oppositors, especially employers groups and economic managers, can cite all their worst-case simulations and forecasts. But they can never counter that most, if not all, regional minimum wages fall below the daily healthy food requirement, poverty threshold, and living wages set and estimated by the Government. Countering every concern and criticism against wage hikes, the National Wage Coalition cites esteemed economists, civil societies, and academics that the imperative to raise workers’ wages far outweigh its supposed negative inflation impact and employment effect. By increasing wages, workers can spend more for their basic needs, thus their money plows back to the economy. With millions of Filipinos suffering from unlivable wages, the most humane and just act is for the government to prioritize the working class over an economy that has already sidelined them for decades.
Ultimately, the National Wage Coalition calls for the end of the myopic and epic fail view that workers are forever taken for granted as scapegoats for rising cost of production and living. The working class of this nation has sacrificed so much, and continues to sacrifice. Workers have every right to work and live with the integrity and decency they so deserve.
MAGING MAKATAO SA MANGGAGAWANG PILIPINONG UHAW SA AGARANG PAGTAAS NG SAHOD!
DAGDAG SAHOD ISABATAS! ₱150 PATAAS!###
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