Labor leaders push for just and fair treatment for workers

WORKERS must be treated as partners in economic development and not as mere commodities, according to a prominent labor lawyer.

“A good and stable economy cannot not be founded on oppressed, exploited and impoverished workers. In fact, they should not also be condemned if they are asserting their rights,” lawyer Luke Espiritu of the Bukluran ng Manggawang Pilipino (BMP) said at recent breakfast forum in Quezon City.

Espiritu said the demand for an across the board wage increase of P150 daily is just and practical as the workers’ income have been severely affected by inflation in the past months.

Federation of Free Workers (FFW) national president Sonny Matula, for his part, refuted the claim of several business groups that granting the P150 daily wage increase would further stoke inflation and drive away investors.

With an increased income, workers can now afford to buy more goods and services, which will be a manifestation of a stable domestic economy, according to Matula.

“In fact, Malaysia and Indonesia have a higher daily minimum wage of P800, and at the same time, they are getting a lot of foreign investments,” Matula pointed out.

In response to the claim of business groups that the informal sector will not benefit from the proposed wage hike, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) official Mark Villena said the government should develop a separate program for the informal sector to help them improve their livelihood opportunities.

In a show of solidarity, trade unions in the Philippines on Wednesday assailed the government for not pushing seriously the urgent recommendations of the International Labour Organization-high Level Tripartite Mission (ILO-HLTM) to stop the killings of trade unionists and blatant violations of workers’ rights to unionize.

The All Philippine Trade Unions (APTU), a network of trade unions and workers’ associations who endorsed the joint workers report to the ILO-HLTM slammed the government for continuing to leave workers out of the inter-agency body to strengthen coordination and expedite the investigation, prosecution and resolution of cases of violations of the right to organize and created by Executive Order 23.

APTU is composed of the FFW, Kilusang Mayo Uno, Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (SENTRO), TUCP, Nagkaisa Labor Coalition, BMP, among others.

Meanwhile, Synergy Market Research + Strategic Consultancy (Synergy) founder and CEO Germaine Reyes told the Businessmirror in an email interview that the government should encourage consumer spending to spur economic growth.

“Historically-speaking, we have grown and become resilient from global economic downturns due to our strong consumption-driven economy. If the government still believes this is what will fuel our economic growth then businesses need to collectively decide not to pass on higher prices to consumers right away in order to make them participate in the economic activities through consumer spending,” Reyes said.