4M workers can’t expect salary hike

CALAMBA CITY—There won’t be any wage increase on Labor Day Saturday for at least 4 million workers in one of the most highly industrialized suburban areas of Metro Manila, labor department officials said.

A lone wage petition that would benefit workers in the Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) is still being studied, said an official of the Department of Labor and Employment in the region.

It was filed by the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), according to Rovelinda de la Rosa, regional wage and productivity board secretary, in a press conference on Thursday. The petition, filed last April 16, seeks a P75 daily wage increase across the board nationwide.

Taking its time

Ricardo Martinez, regional director of the DOLE in Calabarzon, said the board has 90 days to act on the wage petition. De la Rosa said even before the TUCP filed the petition, the regional wage board has been consulting employers and workers’ leaders on wage increases.

Calabarzon’s industrial sector is composed of at least 2,000 garment, textile, automotive and computer parts manufacturing companies.
Currently, the minimum wage rate in the region’s non-agriculture sector ranges from P263 to P320.

An increase in the daily wage in Calabarzon, which was last made in June 2008 amounted to P20.

15,000 jobs

Sans any increase in wages, the DOLE-Calabarzon is offering instead at least 15,000 job vacancies in time for May 1.

The simultaneous job fair will take place in eight SM outlets in the region during mall hours on Saturdays.

As of Friday, the labor department said 225 local companies and 27 overseas employers have agreed to join the job fair.

Martinez said most of the job openings were for SM consignees and business process outsourcing companies.

In previous years, at least 2,000 job seekers trooped to each site of the job fair, with at least 150 immediately hired the same day.

This year’s job fair also targets workers in Laguna and Rizal who were hurt by a string of typhoons late last year, he added.

Increasing employment

Despite the global financial crisis and calamities in the past two years, Martinez said the unemployment rate in the region had gone down from 10.5 percent in 2008 to 9.5 percent by the end of 2009.

In Western Visayas, the regional wage board has scheduled a hearing in Iloilo City on a petition to increase wages there by P50.

The meeting, according to a DOLE official in the region, will lead to a decision whether or not a salary increase would be approved.

The regional wage board is divided over how much the increase should be.

Walkout

Wennie Sancho, labor representative in the board, said he and another labor representative in the board, Hernani Braza, walked out of a board meeting in Cebu last Monday after employers’ representatives offered a P10 wage increase.

Sancho said members of the Western Visayas wage board decided to meet Monday because they happened to be all in Cebu City for a conference of members of different wage boards in the country. –Maricar Cinco, Inquirer Southern Luzon and Carla P. Gomez, Inquirer Visayas