Proposed P150 wage hike ‘approved in principle’
THE Senate committee on labor, employment and human resources has approved in principle the proposed measure of Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri for a P150 salary increase for all workers in the private sector across the country.
The committee conducted a hearing on Wednesday, May 10, 2023, for various bills regarding the proposed minimum wage increase, including Zubiri’s Senate Bill 2022, or the Across-the-board Wage Increase Act.
A technical working group was formed to discuss a proposed graduated wage increase scheme for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
“We expect that the Committee Report will come out in about two weeks, and we hope to pass the bill before we adjourn in June,” said Zubiri.
The Senate president noted that the last legislated minimum wage increase was in 1989, at P89, before the passage of Republic Act 6727, which created the Regional Wage Boards.
“What we have observed, with due respect to our Regional Wage Boards, is that their salary increases are very low and it takes them a long time to address the problem of rising prices and the people’s call for a decent wage. And when they do take action, the increase was very low, between P5 to P16 only,” he said in Tagalog.
Amid concerns that a wage increase would drive away foreign investments, he cited minimum wage figures in the neighboring countries in the region, such as Indonesia whose minimum wage is equivalent to P842.00 per day; Malaysia’s P854.00 a day; and Singapore’s P2,486.00 a day.
He said only Vietnam has a lower minimum wage, equivalent to P511 a day, but Zubiri noted that the cost of living under the Communist Party of Vietnam is lower compared to the Philippines.
“They don’t have any deductions for Pag-IBIG, PhilHealth, or SSS. Here, what’s left for our fellow citizens from P570 is only P525 as take-home pay. That’s just for Metro Manila. We haven’t even discussed Bukidnon or Mindanao yet,” he said.
Mindanao
In Northern Mindanao, where Zubiri hails from, the minimum wage is P390 for non-agricultural workers and P378 for the agricultural sector.
The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao has the lowest wages in the country at P316 for non-agricultural and P306 for agricultural.
Zubiri sought the help of the business sector, saying that many of them have already recovered from the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and are back to making pre-pandemic income.
“I would like to remind everybody that we already reached a 7.6 percent GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate, one of our highest since 1976,” he said.
“But our inflation rate at the start of the year was 8.7 percent.
It only decreased to 6.6 percent. But the prices of food, electricity and water did not decrease. The prices of various industrial products such as steel bars and cement decreased. The Filipino people cannot eat those products,” Zubiri said. /