MANILA, Philippines — The minimum wage set by tripartite boards are only meant to help workers cope with high prices, a Department of Labor and Employment official said Monday, adding that government encourages employers and their workers to negotiate on increases beyond the minimum.
In an interview on CNN Philippines' "The Source", Labor Undersecretary Benedicto Bitonio Jr. said that the regional wage board for Metro Manila had to balance the needs of workers and of employers when it approved a P40 hike in the daily minimum wage in the capital, an increase that labor groups as well as members of the Senate have panned as inadequate.
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"There are other mechanisms by which wages can be increased above the minimum wage. Of course, employers and workers are encouraged by law to undertake their own measures in increasing wages, including collective bargaining," Bitonio said.
"We believe that the bipartite mechanisms are still the best and most efficient way of increasing wages above the minimum wage levels," he said.
But collective bargaining between workers and employers has been hampered by anti-union activities — including profiling, harassment and physical attacks on labor organizers — according to groups under the All Philippine Trade Unions, which has brought these issues up with the International Labour Organization and its Director-General Gilbert Houngbo.
"There are long-standing cases of extrajudicial killings of workers and hundreds of freedom of association violations... abductions, red-tagging, organizers being visited in their homes," Julius Cainglet, vice president of the Federation of Free Workers, said in Filipino on the same program.
"These are still happening at this point in time. Because of our union activities, we are still being tagged as communists or terrorists," Cainglet, whose group is among those calling for the inclusion of workers and employers' representatives in a government body created to investigate violations of the right to organize.
Bitonio earlier in the program said that ILO chief Houngbo agrees with the government's position to have the panel composed of just government agencies because these have the authority to conduct investigations. He said workers' groups can still bring their issues and input to the panel.
READ: Workers hopeful ILO visit will lead to better environment for labor, unions
'Anti-union activities'
Agencies in the National Task Force to End Communist Armed Conflict have been quick to equate union organizing with support and recruitment for communist rebels but APTU said in a press conference last week that the attempts to profile and intimidate labor organizers has spilled over to groups who are not part of the national democratic activist movement — the usual target of the anti-communist task force.
Mark Villena, advocacy officer of Associated Labor Union-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP), said that an affiliate union in a banana plantation in Davao de Oro had been made to attend a "peace awareness program" led by personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Villena, who described ALU as "among the largest and most conservative" unions in the country, said that AFP speakers at the program "urged employees mot to join the union [and said] the union is the reason that companies go bankrupt."
He said a man claiming to be a rebel returnee said workers should just bring their labor issues to the DOLE so that these will be resolved. The man also claimed that unions"brainwash employees to rebel against the government and their company."
The suppsoed rebel returnee at one point even claimed that ALU is part of red-tagged Kilusang Mayo Uno before being corrected by a representative of the AFP, who also told attendees to be vigilant of ALU anyway.
"Clearly, they were imputing that we are involved in seditious activities," Villena said. — Jonathan de Santos