Economic managers to have final say on teachers’ pay

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s economic managers will have the final say on the granting of P10,000 pay hike being sought by public school teachers, according to a Department of Education (DepEd) official.

At the Kapihan sa Manila Bay breakfast forum at Café Adriatico in Malate, Manila on Wednesday, Education Undersecretary for planning and field operations Jesus Lorenzo Mateo told the media that the substantial P10,000 across-the-board pay increase for DepEd personnel will add a staggering P150 billion to the DepEd payroll.

Mateo also disclosed that the pay hike of teachers, along with other government personnel, will be under the next Salary Standardization Law (SSL) in the 2020 budget.

The DepEd was seeking an appropriation of P600 billion for next year.

“So if you add that, we will have to ask for P750 billion,” Mateo said.

“At the end of the day, our economic managers will be the ones to decide if we can grant this or not. It’s not within the power of the department to grant that,” he added.

The DepEd’s annual budget appropriation for this year was more than P500 billion, according to the official.

He explained that DepEd’s total workforce of around 900,000 made up the bulk of the total government workforce of 1.4 million.

The next round of SSL will again be implemented in tranches and not in one bulk pay hike.

Mateo also noted that with the recent string of pay hikes given to public school teachers, average pay for an educator in public school is now P20,754, which was already the envy of their counterparts in private schools.

He pointed out this was the reason there was an exodus of private school teachers turning up in droves seeking teaching positions in public schools.

Still mindful of public school teachers’ lobbying for an increase in salary, Mateo stressed that DepEd was looking at other ways of improving the welfare of teachers, such as their continued issuance of the chalk allowance, which was only P500 a month when it was first issued.

“Now, it’s P2,500,” he said.

DepEd officials are also moving to make physical-medical examination free for public school teachers, charging it to schools’ maintenance and other operating expenses.

Not backing down

As this developed, public school teachers are not backing down from their demand of a P10,000 across-the-board pay hike as they insist that mentors deserve a “dignified salary.”

This was the reaction of the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC), a federation of public school teachers’ associations, to a recent statement of an apparently irked Education Secretary Leonor Briones that teaching was not about money and not a profession to get rich in.

TDC national chairman Benjo Basas said that while they knew from the start that they would “never get rich by embracing the teaching profession,” the issue was about teachers getting a decent salary “that we so deserve as employees, public servants and, most especially, as teachers.”

Teachers were hurt when they heard Briones’ statement, according to Basas.

“As if we only want more money in our pockets. Let me reiterate that our demand for salary increase is based not only on economics. Salaries manifest the value of a given profession and their role in society,” Basas said.

“Thus, if the teachers would only receive P20,754 then that is their value, their price. I bet even the secretary would agree that this is not commensurate to our roles and expected output to our profession. This is not about money, indeed: this is about our dignity,” he added.

Basas argued there are international standards and even national policies that recommend a better compensation package for public school teachers and the DepEd, being the “shepherd of teachers in the Philippines, should be in the frontlines to defend the correctness of the salary increase for them.”

Basas recalled that in 2015, TDC challenged presidential candidates to act on their demand for a P10,000 across-the-board increase in their salaries and then Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte and his runningmate, former senator Alan Peter Cayetano, made a promise to grant such should they win the 2016 elections.

“Cayetano is the main author of the said bill in the Senate during the 16th Congress. And while the government last year made the salaries of the lowest post in military and uniformed personnel doubled, teachers were told to wait even longer,” Basas said.