Group calls for abolition of wage board

CEBU, Philippines - A militant labor group is calling for the abolition of the Regional Tripartite Wage and Productivity Board to be replaced by a wage commission.

Partido ng Manggagawa-Cebu spokesperson Dennis Derige said the wage board must be joking if it thinks it can trick workers with an exclusionary and measly pay increase.

“It is an insult to the groups ALU and Living Wage Coalition which petitioned for P92 and P145 wage increases respectively,” Derige said.

He said the mandate of the National Wage Commission will be to fix wages based on the single criterion of cost of living.

Derige explained that this is different from the wage boards, which are bogged down by convoluted and contradictory 10-point criteria in fixing wages.

The wage commission, he said, should raise the minimum wage to the level of the living wage by a mix of mechanisms such as direct pay increases, tax exemptions, price discounts and social security subsidies for workers.

PM-Cebu likewise slammed the recent P13 wage hike per day for workers in Metro Cebu and called it “starvation wage.”

Two weeks ago, RTWPB-7 agreed to grant a wage adjustment of P13 per day for minimum wage earners in Metro Cebu only.

With this, PM-Cebu is calling on ALU-TUCP and the Living Wage Coalition to jointly campaign in protest against the wage board’s decision and in rejection of their wage petitions.

The campaign, Derige said should pressure the National Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board, which has to approve the wage board’s decision.

 “Did the workers in the rest of Cebu province and Bohol not also suffer from erosion of purchasing power? Don’t they have the same difficulties as workers in Metro Cebu in feeding their families and sending their children to school due to inflation? The wage board’s reason for granting a salary increase in Metro Cebu also holds for all workers in the region,” said Derige in a statement.

Derige added that based on their own study, it shows that the cost of living in Metro Cebu is around P1,000 for a family of five and yet the new minimum wage adds up to only P353, which will not even buy half of the basket of goods and services.

He likewise assailed the argument of the wage board that wages outside of Metro Cebu are already too high in comparison to other cities and regions.

 “Wages in Region-7 are not too high but salaries in other areas are too low. The solution is not to freeze wages outside of Metro Cebu but to provide generous salary hikes to workers in other regions,” Derige further said.  (FREEMAN)