MANILA, Philippines - Government nurses and public school teachers may have to say goodbye to their dream of getting sharp salary increases soon as lawmakers are set to ratify a resolution modifying an earlier approved compensation and classification system for government employees.
Sen. Pia Cayetano raised the warning as the Senate and the House of Representatives are set to allow the changes through their ratification of Joint Resolution No.26.
The bicameral conference committee swiftly reconciled and approved the House and Senate versions of the proposal last Monday.
Instead of implementing the Nursing Act of 2002 or Republic Act No. 9173 that assigns the starting position of all government nurses at Salary Grade 15, J.R. No. 26 now pegs the entry level of nurses to only SG 11 from the current level of SG 10.
Cayetano said that instead of receiving a starting pay of P25,067 per month at Salary Grade 15 under RA 9173, nurses may only look forward to P18,088 per month under J.R. No. 26, which is just a slight improvement from their current starting salary of P12,026 per month.
“In addition, the proposed hike would even be spread over four years, and so the impact of the increase would likely be negligible and overtaken by the rising cost of living,” Cayetano explained.
“The non-implementation of the Nursing Act of 2002 itself is already a violation by the executive branch of our nurses’ right to just compensation. But in approving J.R. No.26, Congress will be vastly reducing the compensation and benefits denied to our government nurses in the last seven years,” she said. “We are taking back from our nurses what our previous Congress had accorded them. We are effectively violating their right to non-diminution of compensation, a principle that is deeply ingrained in our labor laws,” she pointed out.
She also said that the clamor for a substantial wage hike by the country’s 450,000 public school teachers, comprising nearly one-third of the total 1.4 million civil servants, was not accommodated in the joint resolution. She noted that the Senate had already approved Senate Bill No. 2408 in July last year which sought to increase the salary of teachers by P9,000 over the next three years.
“The approved joint resolution, however, only grants a P6,500 pay increase to teachers over the next four years. So not only is the Senate retreating from its earlier stand to grant our teachers a bigger increase over a shorter period, it is also disregarding their long-standing demand for decent wages,” she said,
But Sen. Edgardo Angara said the joint resolution would lay the legal basis for a revised compensation structure to correct the faults and weaknesses of the present system.
In particular, the joint resolution seeks to benchmark the government compensation structure with the private sector.
“This provides higher basic pay increases for positions where the disparities in pay are largest,” Angara, chair of the Senate committee on finance, said.