TIME is now up for the government to address the heavy burden of sub-poverty threshold wages of over five million minimum wage earning Filipinos. This translates to five million malnourished and hungry working families and a generation of children who are now both stunted in growth mentally and physically.
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) has filed wage petitions in 10 regions and counting. These are in the National Capital Region (NCR), Region 7, Region 9, Region 10, Region 11, Region 12, Region 13, Region 4A, and Region 5.We will be next filing in Region 1 and Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR).
The current administration is not just perpetuating a policy of cheap labor, but also aiding and abetting the continuing injustice of minimum wages that cannot meet the legitimate needs of a family of five to live reasonably and decently.
Instead of acting with dispatch, both the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and Regional Wage Boards bound themselves in bureaucratic delay and countless rounds of hearing, giving false hopes to wage earners that new wage orders will be issued. In the jargon, “Drini-dribble lang tayo.”
The pandemic of “Endo” (5 or 6 months contractual jobs) and other contractual work are growing. The majority of existing jobs and new jobs are by-and-large is Endo or contractual jobs. The number of those Endo work has escalated with the anti-union policies that have been introduced—chief among this is the creation of formerly known as Joint Industrial Peace Council (JIPCO) and now called Alliance for Industrial Peace and Program (AIPP). Organized to counter radical unionism, it is now a device to discourage workers from freely associating and deny them the chance to bargain for better wages, better terms and conditions of work and for regularization.
The AIPP is nothing more than an instrument of state to send chilling effect to the labor movement. Lest we misunderstand de facto state policy, the TUCP and its affiliates have received uninvited and unwelcome visits of PNP and the AFP elements to our office premises. Police and intelligence clearance are increasingly being required of job applicants. Workers who are trying to organize were given lectures and seminars by the AFP on the links between trade unionism and terrorism.
Labor Secretary Bello and the National Wages and Productivity Commission, the Regional Wage Boards and other government agencies responsible for this high-handed failure to act quickly on what should be a non-issue: the need of minimum wage earning families to survive.
They are the ones who will be accountable to the 5 million workers who are now seemingly waiting in vain for a wage increase. We fear that the DOLE, the Wage Boards, and the outgoing administration is really going to pass the buck to the next administration. Again we say, “Aanhin pa ang damo kapag patay na ang kabayo.”
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