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MANILA, Philippines — Union leaders of medical workers under the Private Healthcare Workers Network (PHWN) filed on Tuesday a petition seeking a P750 increase in their daily minimum wage before the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board-National Capital Region (RTWPB-NCR) office in Manila.
The unions of St. Luke’s Medical Center (SLMC) Quezon City and Bonifacio Global City, Manila Doctors Hospital, and The Medical City, through their presidents Roldan Clumia, Dahlia Alorro, Ronald Millano and Dennis Memoracion, respectively, cited in their petition the inability of minimum wage earners to cope with inflation as the current wages were below the government’s poverty threshold and estimates of family living wages.
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“The foregoing petition is based on the need for wage adjustment vis-à-vis the consumer price index, cost of living and changes therein, needs of workers and their families, and improvements to standards of living,” they said.
Public hearing set
The RTWPB-NCR is scheduled to hold a public hearing on Wednesday to hear the petition filed on May 24 by the Unity for Wage Increase Now for a P597 daily minimum wage increase for workers in the private sector.
The minimum pay per day for nonagricultural workers in Metro Manila is currently P610, which translates to P13,176 given an average of 21.6 working days per month. This, the PHWN pointed out, is lower than the Philippine Statistics Authority’s latest estimate of P15,586 as the income poverty threshold per month for a family of five.
The petitioners also cited the Ibon Foundation’s estimate of the family’s daily living wage of P1,192 as of April.
“The NCR wage board has to prove us wrong by putting an end to starvation wages and getting the minimum closer to an income that could provide a decent life [for] the workers and their families,” Clumia, president of the SLMC Employees’ Association-QC, said in a statement.
Clumia added that the wage petition was a chance for the RTWPB “to prove us wrong” as workers still prefer a legislated wage increase that Congress is expected to tackle when it resumes session in July.
“The only avenue, for now, to address the pressing demand to immediately increase the minimum wage is through the wage boards. The supervening event for issuing an urgent wage increase, even before the one-year ban for wage orders, is not only the spiraling prices of basic needs but the eroding trust of the workers in the current regional wage fixing mechanism,” he said.
Memoracion of The Medical City Employees’ Association said that while workers in unionized hospitals, which have collective bargaining agreements, earn more than the minimum wage, the PHWN decided to file the petition on behalf of all health workers in unorganized private and public hospitals and all struggling minimum wage earners.