W. Visayas mayors, traders fight wage hike
BACOLOD CITY—Eight business groups and the mayors’ league are opposed to any increase in wages for workers in Western Visayas, including those in this city.
In a letter from the businessmen and mayors sent to the Western Visayas regional tripartite wages and productivity board, the wage increase opponents said an adjustment in workers’ pay would trigger increases in prices of food, water and power.
Any benefit generated by a wage increase, the groups said, would be obliterated by rising prices of goods and services, the business groups said in their letter to the regional wage board.
The letter was signed by the representatives of Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Bacolod Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chamber of Real Estate and Builders Association Negros Occidental Chapter Inc., Bankers Club of Negros Occidental, Southern Negros Fil-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Northern Negros Fil-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, League of Municipal Mayor of the Philippines Negros Occidental Chapter and the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Negros Occidental.
But Wennie Sancho, regional wage board labor representative, said a wage increase was imperative because of the rising prices of basic commodities, transportation and power.
Sancho said labor, through the Trade Union of Filipino Workers, had been pushing for a P97 increase in daily wages.
On July 16, 2011, the wage board granted P12 in provisional emergency cost of living allowance daily to workers in Western Visayas for three months, from July to October.
The business groups and league of mayors said labor laws provided that a government wage order might not be replaced with a new one unless there were so-called supervening conditions.
They also quoted Ciriaco Lagunzad III, executive director of the National Wages Productivity Council, as saying that any increase in wages should improve real income of workers and not trigger inflation.
The minimum wage in Western Visayas is P265 for commercial and industrial workers with more than 10 workers, P223 for commercial and industrial sector with less than 10 workers, P233 for plantation workers and P223 for agricultural workers.
The labor sector in the Philippines has been demanding increases in daily wages every year, but to no avail.
A bid to legislate a P125 increase in daily wages has been effectively killed in the House of Representatives.
