EDITORIAL - Wage adjustment

For decades, it has been the common practice among the country’s labor organizations and cause-oriented groups to aggressively push for another round of salary increase as part of the Labor Day celebrations.

During the Labor Day celebrations in Cebu on Wednesday, labor groups said they will petition the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board-7 for a P351.50 across-the-board hike in the salary of workers in Central Visayas.

According to Metudio Belarmino, spokesman of the petitioners, they hope that the RTWPB will grant their petition this time, considering the board’s dismissal of their previous petition filed in October last year.

In Metro Manila, the Associated Labor Union-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) filed a petition before the National Capital Region Wage Board for a P710 increase in the daily wage of workers in the private sector in the capital.

If approved, the two petitions will push the daily minimum salaries for private sector workers in the National Capital Region and Central Visayas to P1,245 and P737 from P537 and P386, respectively.

But it would be impossible for the wage boards to approve the rates pushed by the labor sector. Based on previous wage hike approvals, the government would normally ignore the rates in the petition and only settle for a much lower salary increase.

That is because the government is also determining the wage hike’s effects on the business sector. Let us face it; any salary increase can also seriously affect many companies in this time when operating expenses are also skyrocketing.

But that is not an excuse for the government not to grant the wage hike petitions at all. The ordinary workers are really in need of a raise in their take-home pay given the rising costs of living that they have to cope with.

However, any salary adjustment must be reasonable enough, one that does not take a heavy toll on the business sector, otherwise many establishments will be forced to close shop or implement mass layoffs.