The Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) on Wednesday said the PHP150 per day legislated wage hike being sought by the labor sector will not soften the blow of inflation for the vast majority of the country’s workforce, instead it only stands to benefit employees in the formal sector.
In an interview, ECOP president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. said the proposed Congress-mandated salary increase can only cover employees of private companies, which constitute only 16 percent of the total number of Filipino workers.
He said some 84 percent of the labor force derive their livelihood from the informal sector, and therefore will not be benefited by a law mandating a steep wage hike.
Ortiz-Luis said the across-the-board pay increase being sought by the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) will also benefit executive and other managerial-level employees who are not as financially hard up as rank-and-file workers.
“It (legislated wage hike) will only serve to widen the disparity between workers in the formal sector and the informal sector,” he added.
Aside from benefitting only a minority of employees, Ortiz-Luis said the 70 percent of companies in the formal sector belong to the micro enterprises category, and may not be able to afford an additional PHP150 a day on each person they employ.
He said many micro businesses were severely affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, and have only recently begun to embark on the painstaking path of recovery.
Meanwhile, TUCP announced on Wednesday it filed House Bill 7871, or the “Wage Recovery Act of 2023,” through House Deputy Speaker Raymond Democrito Mendoza.
The labor union said it seeks to provide a legislated across-the-board increase of PHP150 in the daily wages of private sector employees nationwide, whose salaries have been severely eroded by inflation.
“Workers can no longer afford to wait for the regional wage boards to act. Since late last year, TUCP was already calling on the wage boards to address the steady decline in the real value of wages,” Mendoza said in a statement. (PNA)