MANILA, Philippines — Ten new wage orders, granting increases of from P1 to P20 in either basic pay or cost of living allowance, took effect this year, Labor Secretary Rosalindo Baldoz said Wednesday.
The wage orders were issued by the Regional Tripartite Wage and Productivity Boards in the Cordillera Administrative Region, Regions 1, 2, 3, 4-A, 5, 7, 11, 12, and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.
The rest of the RTWPBs are still in various stages of assessing the socio-economic conditions and holding sectoral consultations to determine how much to adjust minimum wages.
Badoz said of the 17 regional wage boards, eight have brought their minimum wages to levels higher than their region’s poverty income threshold, in compliance with the wage reform called the Two-Tiered Wage System.
The reform consists of a genuine floor wage as Tier 1, which is set above the poverty income threshold, to help workers and families meet their basic needs and to contribute to poverty reduction, but not to exceed average wages to allow bipartite approaches, such as collective bargaining, in setting better terms and conditions of employment.
As the regional wage boards transition to the Two-Tiered Wage System, there have been simplifications in the minimum wage structures which, in turn, are expected to facilitate administration and enforcement.
“With the adoption of the two-tiered wage system, it is expected that all minimum wages shall be above the regional poverty income threshold by end of 2016,” said Baldoz.
The second part of the TTWS reform aims to encourage workers and enterprises to mutually agree to adopt productivity incentive schemes as a sustainable source of higher revenues for the businesses enterprises and higher real incomes for workers over and above the mandatory minimum wage.
Baldoz said 15 RTWPBs have issued advisories on the implementation of productivity incentive schemes for industries like tourism, transportation and storage, manufacturing, mining, canning (sardines), banana, plantation for selected crops, higher education institutions and hotels and restaurants.
These advisories contain an assessment of an industry’s performance and outlook for the coming year and, on this basis, recommend a percentage range of productivity based wage increases.
In addition, the RTWPBs are also currently organizing orientations and providing technical assistance in the form of training and consulting to establishments that have decided to implement productivity incentive schemes in their workplaces. –Jet Villa, InterAksyon.com
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