The Freeman Newspaper: The labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) declared that the real value of wages of workers in Metro Cebu have been reduced by P51 due to worsening inflation.
The PM said that just recently, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) announced that headline inflation has risen to 6.9 percent for September 2022.
“Cebu workers support the call for a P100 legislated across-the-broad wage increase,” said Dennis Derige, PM-Cebu spokesperson.
Derige said that the P435 minimum wage in Metro Cebu is only worth P384 due to increases in prices of food, electricity and other basic commodities.
The PSA also noted that inflation for electricity and gas was among the highest.
In 2018, the PM had already estimated that the daily cost of living is around P1,300.
“Obviously we need to update this figure as inflation has ratcheted up in the past four years. Whatever the exact number, we need urgent action from the government and Congress. Thus, our call for a P100 wage hike within the first 100 days of the new government,” Derige said in a statement.
He added that the focus now is on worsening inflation that has eroded workers' nominal wages.
“But we have not even tackled growing inequality due to the stagnation of real wages while productivity is booming,” he said.
He said that from 2001 to 2016, labor productivity grew by at least 50 percent, yet the real wages did not grow at all as workers have been denied their fair share in the fruits of production.
Aside from the specific wage hike demand, PM also asked for a comprehensive government response on the worsening economic crisis and other “covariate shocks” that has led to mass layoffs and the rise in unemployment to 5.3 percent in August or an additional 79,000 jobless Filipinos.
Covariate shocks, Derige explained, are disasters that affect whole communities.
It can be recalled that some 4,000 garment workers were retrenched at Sports City in the Mactan Export Processing Zone in Lapu-Lapu City and a few thousand workers also lost their jobs due to the temporary closure of Coca-Cola plants in Iloilo, Bohol, Davao, Cavite, Zamboanga, and Camarines Sur.
“The government must set in place social protection systems that mitigate the impact on jobs, income, health and well-being of people. Mass layoffs and strong typhoons are all covariate shocks and the new normal in our lives. Social protection is one response to this challenge,” Derige further said.
The PM is pushing for public employment, preferably in climate jobs, for unemployed workers over a period of 100 days to nine months at minimum wages or P10,000, whichever is higher.
The group is also calling for wage subsidies equivalent to 75 percent of the prevailing minimum wage to save jobs of workers in micro, medium and small enterprises. — Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon/GMR
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