Commission to consider wage hike petitions

THE National Wages and Productivity Commission meets next week to review a petition for a 75-peso increase in the minimum daily wage in Metro Manila amid the rising prices of fuel, electricity, and basic goods and services, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said Wednesday.

The Energy Department is also in talks with the Finance Department for a “relief fund” for the transport sector as a result of increasing volatility in world oil prices.

Baldoz said she will meet with the commission’s board, led by Executive Director Ciriaco Lagunzad III, on March 14 to determine whether there is merit in the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines’ petition, and to evaluate how the recent price increases have affected the cost of living.

Lagunzad said the workers’ demand for a wage increase could only be granted in case of a so-called supervening condition, such as an extraordinary increase in the price of gas, transport fares or essential commodities.

Ordinarily, he said, no petition may be heard within a year of the issuance of the last wage order, but there were three instances in the past in which two orders were issued within a year because of supervening conditions.

In 2008 the wage board granted successive increases in the daily pay of minimum wage earners because of extraordinary increases in the prices of petroleum products.

The TUCP, the country’s biggest labor group, said the prevailing minimum wage of P404 in Metro Manila was not keeping up with the rate of inflation.

TUCP Rep. Raymond Mendoza said the last P22 increase did not meet workers’ need for a decent living wage.

“We filed for a 75-peso across-the-board wage increase in March 2010 just for a partial recovery of the already eroded purchasing power of minimum earners,” he said.

“Sadly, in July, what the workers got in Metro Manila was a measly 22-peso wage hike. We appealed the unjust decision both at the [National Capital Region] Regional Tripartite Wage and Productivity Board and the National Wages and Productivity Commission.”

The group filed another petition on Tuesday.

Mendoza said the prices between July 2008 and December 2010 had increased by 4.4 percent, while the consumer price index for 2011 was projected to rise by 10 percent.

Also on Wednesday, Senator Ralph Recto, author of the expanded value-added tax law, urged the government to cut the consumption tax on petroleum products as pump prices continued to rise in the wake of political upheaval in the Middle East and Libya.

“Diesel should be restored to its pre-Libya level to provide relief to the commuting masses and to ease pressure on fare rates and prices of basic commodities,” Recto said. –Vito Barcelo with Rey Salita, Manila Standard Today