DOLE: Wage board can adjust wage sans petition

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines – The Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPB) can recommend for an adjustment in wage even in the absence of a petition.

This was the statement of Atty. Forter Puguon, regional director of the Department of Labor and Employment VIII. He said the members of RTWPB meets regularly to assess the situation of minimum wage earners.

“Even if there is no petition for a salary increase, the wage board always reviews the economic indicators so that we can initiate action whether a wage order should be issued,” Puguon said.

A public hearing is required before the Board can issue an order.

The RTWPB can issue a wage order only once in a given year. No petition for a wage increase may be entertained within 12 months since the effectivity of an order except when there is a supervening condition, such as an extraordinary increase in prices of petroleum products and basic goods and services.

“Before issuing a wage order, we follow certain criteria for minimum wage fixing which include the needs of workers and their families, capacity to pay of the employers, comparable wages and the requirements for national development such as the need to induce industries to invest in the countryside and the effects on employment generation and family income,” Puguon said.

The latest wage order dated June 16, 2008 mandates that the rate for workers in the non-agriculture sector is at P238 per day while those in the agriculture sector is set at P213 for workers in plantations and P198.50 for workers non-plantation workers.

The prescriptive period to file a petition ended last June 2010.

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said it will petition for a P50 wage increase in Eastern Visayas.

Meanwhile, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) in Eastern Visayas reported that labor force employment declined from 2005 up to 2008 but labor force participation increased in 2009.

“Agriculture accounts for the large share of employment which is about half of the total employment,” NEDA Region 8 Director Buenaventura Go-Soco said during the Regional Development Council (RDC) meeting on Wednesday.

Soco added that in 2008, around 47 percent of workers were in agriculture, but the number has reportedly dropped by one percent and still continues to decline. 

In contrast, the employment in the services sector has increased by three percent. – Miriam G. Desacada/JMO (THE FREEMAN)