The Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board approved a P15 wage hike last Tuesday which will take effect on mid-April. But labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno said the amount is not enough for a worker’s family to live decently.
KMU, in a statement on Wednesday, condemned the Metro Manila wage board for implementing a P15 wage hike, saying the amount is “insulting to the country’s workers.”
Independent think-tank Ibon Foundation, the Family Living Wage in the country, or the amount needed daily by an average Filipino family to live decently, stood at P1,086 last August 2014.
KMU, together with workers’ formations from both the private and public sectors under the umbrella of broad campaign network All Workers’ Unity, is calling for the implementation of a National Minimum Wage in the amount of P16,000.
According to KMU, P16,000 is only half of the FLW computed monthly.
“Region-based wage hikes don’t address the attacks carried out against the minimum wage in the country for decades. We are fighting for the implementation of a National Minimum Wage in the amount of P16,000 monthly to give workers some immediate relief and to turn back the attacks against the minimum wage throughout the country,” Elmer Labog, national chairperson of KMU said.
Labog said the wage hike “won’t even suffice to cover for the recently-approved increases in fares for the MRT and LRT and for the planned increases in fares for the PNR.”
Labog said workers are preparing for bigger protests in the build-up to Labor Day and on Labor Day itself, to call for Aquino’s resignation, the implementation of a National Minimum Wage in the amount of P16,000 monthly, and the banning of contractual employment.
