‘Don’t be so stingy,’ unions ask hoteliers

Labor groups have scoffed at the disapproval of the Philippine Hotel Owners Association (PHOA) of the proposed wage increase, saying the P150 hike is just worth a cup of takeout coffee for these employers.

The Federation of Free Workers (FFW) has urged the House of Representatives to expedite the passage of its counterpart bill of the Senate’s approved version mandating a P100 hike in daily wage for private workers.

Feeling slighted by the PHOA’s purported stinginess, which represents 206 hotels across the country, FFW president Sonny Matula argued that the proposed P150 wage hike increase is “just worth a cup of coffee of your hotel manager.”

“The hotel managers, for sure, were able to even watch Taylor Swift’s concert in Singapore. We hope that they can give up a cup of their daily coffee and support the swift passage of the wage increase law to help their workers—regular, contractual, seasonal and agency-supplied—across the country,” he said in a statement on Sunday.

READ: Labor group asks employers to grant wage hike: ‘P150 is just for coffee’

According to the FFW, the tourism sector is “recovering robustly” after being hit hard for two years by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is evidenced by the Department of Tourism’s report that the 5 million international tourists brought in P480 billion last year.

‘Gift to workers’

The FFW and other labor groups are calling on the House committee on labor to fast-track the approval of the wage increase. The committee is set to vote on Wednesday for the wage hike proposal’s movement to plenary deliberation.

Trade unions are aiming for a wage hike announcement by President Marcos as a “gift to workers” on May 1, Labor Day.

The last time a legislated national wage hike in the Philippines was carried out was in 1989 through Republic Act No. 6727, or the Wage Rationalization Act, which raised the national minimum wage from P64 to P89. INQ