In President Aquino’s last State of the Nation Address, he boldly asserted that the strategy in making growth inclusive is “sagarin ang oportunidad para sa lahat.” (Open to the max every opportunity for all.) Workers now ask P-Noy: Sagad na ba ang P10 umento sa sahod? (Is the P10-salary hike the best there is?)
How can an additional P10 in minimum wages for workers in the National Capital Region lead to inclusive growth? P-Noy keeps boasting about the 7.8-percent increase in our country’s gross domestic product, yet for him a P10-coin is all that the creators of this greater wealth can partake of!
P-Noy’s “inclusive growth” is so much propaganda with government unwilling to give workers a bigger slice of the cake; it is no different from the rhetoric of “daang matuwid” with the administration favoring pork barrel reform instead of abolition.
Presidential Spokesperson Abigail Valte’s alibi that a bigger pay raise will lead to job losses is the usual capitalist blackmail that government has parroted for the last three decades. All that time—except for the recession years 1984, 1985, 1991 and 1998—the economy grew even as poverty, hunger and unemployment persisted. Without wealth redistribution—and a living wage, instead of poverty pay, is a key component—inequality will remain.
With a P10-pay hike, how can government lift out of dire poverty the poorest 28 percent of Filipinos? With a P10-wage raise, how can the 19.2 percent of Filipinos who experience hunger put more food on their tables?
Valte’s excuse that the measly wage hike sought to balance workers’ and employers’ interests is a surefire formula to aggravate inequality. According to Forbes magazine, the wealth of the richest 50 Filipinos increased by an incredible 348 percent from 2006 to 2013, while that of the richest 10 grew by an immoral 1,005 percent.
The P1.9-trillion combined wealth of the richest 10 Filipinos is equivalent to the yearly income of 21 million minimum-wage earners. While the P2.8-trillion total wealth of the richest 50 corresponds to the yearly pay of 31 million minimum-wage workers. Based on the Global Pay Scale survey, the Philippines ranks third to the last before Pakistan and Tajikistan, with Filipino workers’ average wage of $279 (around P12,000) a month way below the world median of $1,480.
Partido ng Manggagwa is advocating the replacement of the regional wage boards by a National Wage Commission. The mandate of the commission will be to fix wages based on the single criterion of cost of living. This will be different from the wage boards which are bogged down by convoluted and contradictory 10-point criteria in fixing wages. The wage commission 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.
Further we call on labor groups for a coordinated campaign for a living wage. If the middle class finds it necessary to hold a Million People March for the abolition of the pork barrel, it is imperative for the working class to launch a mass movement to end the cheap labor policy.
—WILSON FORTALEZA, spokesperson, Partido ng Manggagawa,
manggagawa@gmail.com