The labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) said the government’s top economic managers are acting as private employers’ spokespersons in rejecting the proposed P150 wage hike pending approval in Congress.
The labor group slammed National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan and Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno for “moonlighting as employers’
spokespersons” with their doomsday predictions about a P150 legislated wage hike.
“Employers Confederation of the Philippines President Sergio R. Ortiz-Luis, Jr. also warned of job losses, price hikes, and economic slowdown if wages are raised. The government’s economic managers and employers’ representatives are both painting the same apocalyptic
scenarios without any substantiation,” PM spokesperson Rene Magtubo said.
“Our own economic modeling shows that salary increases will have an insignificant impact on both employment and inflation contrary to Balisacan and Diokno’s claims. Empirical studies for other countries also show similar results,” he said.
Magtubo added that “raising wages improves living standards and has a secondary effect of
increasing worker motivation and morale and thus labor productivity.”
He said that Balisacan and Diokno conveniently forget that the government’s own data confirm that from 2001 to 2016, real wages were stagnant but labor productivity grew by 50% while GDP doubled.
The labor group said the P150 legislated wage hike seeks mainly to recover the lost value of workers’ wages and not yet to partake of the increased labor productivity.
“Even a P150 will not raise workers’ wages to the level of a living wage, which today stands at around P1,300 per day and increasing due to unabated inflation,” Magtubo said.