Senate President Juan Miguel “Migz” F. Zubiri (File photo from the Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)
MANILA, Philippines — Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri on Tuesday filed a measure seeking an across-the-board increase of P150 in the daily pay of workers in the private sector, saying a “decent life costs a decent wage.”
“Given the urgency of the situation, a legislated wage increase is called for to ease the effect of wage erosion brought about by inflation,” Zubiri said in the explanatory note of Senate Bill No. 2002, or the proposed Across-the-Board Wage Increase Act of 2023.
He noted that the country’s inflation rate reached 8.7 percent in January, the highest in 14 years. This narrowly slowed down to 8.6 percent last month.
Once approved, the Senate leader said the salary increase would benefit all workers in the agricultural and nonagricultural industries “regardless of capitalization and number of employees” of the employers.
Zubiri introduced the bill after the Makabayan bloc filed a similar measure in the House of Representatives pushing for a P750 across-the-board pay hike nationwide.
“If workers are putting in hours and hours of labor, day after day, and yet are still unable to afford their rent, bills and basic necessities, then there is a problem,” Zubiri said.
“In the Senate, we addressed the collective bargaining of our employees’ union for increased benefits, in accordance with the rising costs of commodities. And now, with this bill, I hope to answer similar calls from workers across the country,” he said.