More wage hike petitions to be filed

MANILA, Philippines — More petitions for pay hike are set to be filed in different Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Boards (RTWPBs), the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) announced yesterday.        

Louie Corral, TUCP vice president, said they are filing within the week formal wage hike petitions before the RTWPBs in Central Visayas, Central Luzon and Calabarzon.

The group is seeking between P386 to P798 for workers in Central Visayas, said Associated Labor Unions-TUCP vice president for education Eva Arcos. It is still evaluating the appropriate amount of wage increase it would ask for workers in Calabarzon and Central Luzon.        

“We will finalize them this week because we are already filing them with Central Visayas on Tuesday,” Arcos said at a media forum.

The latest wage orders issued by the RTWPB in Central Luzon and Central Visayas were in August 2018 while that of Calabarzon was in April 2018.

Corral said they are filing the wage petitions because the prevailing minimum wage rates in those three regions are no longer sufficient for workers to buy basic nutritional foods.

TUCP earlier filed a P710 wage petition for workers in Metro Manila.

In an effort to provide more “accurate” salary adjustments for minimum wage earners, Labor Undersecretary Ciriaco Lagunzad said the country’s wage setting system is now under review.

He added that the International Labor Organization (ILO) is helping the Philippine government in improving the existing wage setting mechanism.

“The ILO sent an expert on minimum wage setting and he is helping us improve the way the setting is processed. We try to understand how the whole set of statistics can be the basis of the wage increase. So, he is proposing a number of statistics that will consider the criteria set in the law,” Lagunzad explained.

According to him, there are 10 indicators being used by the RTWPBs in determining whether salary adjustments shall be granted or not.

The RTWPBs look into relevant variables and try to assess the amount of wage increase the country’s economy is capable of absorbing.

The ILO expert, Lagunzad said, is looking into the possibility of putting numbers or levels on the 10 factors.