The quest for a just wage

After the Senate approved on second reading last week a bill seeking to raise the daily minimum wage of private sector workers by P100, employers immediately warned of a “catastrophe,” claiming this will cause prices of goods to spiral higher, force small firms struggling to pay higher salaries to lay off workers, and impact the majority of the workforce. This is expected as the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (Ecop) rarely supports any proposal that will raise wages that, in turn, increase their costs and eventually affect their profitability.

Even the House of Representatives, which needs to pass a counterpart bill for the proposal to prosper and eventually become law, is lukewarm to the move to legislate a wage increase. Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin said in reaction to the Senate decision that while the lower chamber had a number of pending bills on wage hikes, they still needed to deliberate on how to balance the needs of workers with the realities of businesses. “If we raise wages, it should be at a rate that our business people could shoulder,” she noted.

Highest family living wage

There is, however, broad agreement on the fact that current minimum wages are not enough to meet an ordinary household’s needs. As of January, per Ibon Foundation, a family of five in Metro Manila needs P1,193 a day or P25,946 a month to live decently. It lists the highest family living wage in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, at P2,026 a day, as against the actual daily minimum there of P306 to P341. The Senate likewise pointed out that Metro Manila’s present minimum wage of P610 a day is also being eroded by inflation, putting the real value of the minimum wage at P514.50 in July 2023, and P504 in October that year due to rising consumer prices. Garin also admitted that a P100 wage hike was still “insufficient given the rising cost of living.”

“This yawning average minimum wage-family living wage gap … starkly represents the vast sea of unfulfilled basic necessities of ordinary Filipino families, which the national government should urgently address through substantial wage increases amid historic inflationary surges,” House Assistant Minority Leader and Gabriela party list Rep. Arlene Brosas said when she and Makabayan bloc lawmakers filed House Bill No. 7568 in March last year seeking a nationwide daily wage increase of P750 for all private sector workers.

Good incentive

Contrast these wage figures with data cited in HB 7568 showing that the total gross revenue of the top 1,000 companies in the country surged by 17.5 percent in 2021 to P13.44 trillion from P11.44 trillion during the height of the pandemic in 2020. It was, according to the bill, the fastest gross revenue growth since the 24.4-percent expansion recorded in 2001.

After Zubiri announced the Senate’s approval of the P100 wage hike bill on second reading, he challenged the House to likewise act on a counterpart bill to get the measure moving in Congress. All eyes will now be on Speaker Martin Romualdez, who in the past had successfully shepherded lawmakers in the House to quickly pass bills. This was the case in the approval of the bill creating the Maharlika Investment Fund, the country’s first sovereign wealth fund, which breezed through the House in record time.

The upcoming midterm elections in 2025 may also be a good incentive for lawmakers. Legislating a wage increase will generate praise from millions of wage earners who will remember them for such a good deed on election day. From all indications, it seems the debate may boil down to the amount of increase that, as Garin said, is a middle ground for both workers and capitalists.

‘Form of relief’

For labor groups, there is little they can do to sway legislators into approving a bigger increase than the P100 a day approved by the Senate. Nagkaisa labor coalition chair Sonny Matula and spokesperson Rene Magtubo said they would still welcome the proposal as a “form of relief,” noting this remains “a far cry from what was needed to save minimum wage earners from the poverty wages imposed [by the] regional wage boards.” Ecop’s claim that it will only benefit workers in the big and profitable companies may only be partly true. Not all the money-making businesses are confined to these corporate giants, which had reportedly told Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, chair of the Senate labor panel, that they are supportive of the proposed P100 increase. A lot of small and medium companies have been profitable and even expanding, and must now also think of the greater good. Knowing that higher mandated wages will fuel inflation by making their goods more expensive, why can’t they just absorb as much of the increase in cost as their revenues can take?

In all the coming discussions on the propriety or impropriety of a P100 increase in the minimum wage, lawmakers, employers—big and small—and the Marcos administration’s economic managers must all be reminded that denying workers their fair wages is simply unjust. This is an injustice long suffered by Filipino workers.