Wanted: Uniform payroll treatment for regular and special holidays

Malacañang has announced that there will be 10 regular holidays (as has always been) and at least 10, possibly 11 and counting, special holidays for 2024. By the way, regular holidays are covered by specific legislation while special holidays are administratively proclaimed by the Office of the President.

I was a bit surprised that special holidays had gone up to as many, recalling that not too long ago we only had not more than five annually. At any rate, I see nothing wrong with this number as holidays can help promote our tourism industry. Very well-intentioned except for the big and unthinkable difference in the legal treatment of the two types of holiday for payroll purposes.

The law provides that an employee is entitled to his basic pay for all unworked regular holidays and receives at least 200 percent of his daily wage if he works for not exceeding eight hours on a regular holiday. If the regular holiday work falls on the scheduled weekly rest day of the employee, he shall be entitled to an additional premium of 30 percent of his regular holiday rate of 200 percent based on his daily wage. On the other hand, the employee gets absolutely nothing for not working, and a measly extra 30 percent of his basic pay for working, on a special holiday.

The good news is, over time not a few employers, either unilaterally or pursuant to collective bargaining agreements, have learned to extend the payroll computation legally applicable to regular holidays down to special holidays as well. The bad news is, there still exists in our midst and times a sizable bulk of the country’s labor force who cannot escape from abject poverty. This essentially owes, among others, to employees working only on casual, temporary, or contractual basis, receiving sub-minimum wages, and remaining unorganized to negotiate for better working terms and conditions. They remain quite miserably at the sole mercy of their employers who, nevertheless, may not be faulted for simply abiding by a defective law.

Let us be honest and get real! Does a worker stand to lose something or otherwise suffer more inconveniences when working or not working on a regular holiday than on a special holiday for the related payroll treatment to be rendered grossly unfair, imprudent, and irrational? Or, is the President’s discretion or sometimes widespread propensity to declare nonworking holidays deemed relatively not as well-thought as that of Congress? Definitely not!

That up to now our honorable lawmakers have wittingly or unwittingly, or perhaps just out of extreme naivete, ignored to tackle this long-unwanted legal infirmity truly leaves very much to be desired.

RUDY CORONEL,
Batangas City,