A labor coalition in the Philippines has urged the Congress to defer the imposition of the Social Security System (SSS) contribution increase, saying it is untimely as workers are still recovering from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Nagkaisa Labor Coalition said in a statement Saturday that the “increase might be necessary but to impose it now is untimely as all are reeling the effect of a worldwide pandemic.”
The labor group stressed that the one percent premium increase “is an additional burden” of P50 for workers who are earning a monthly income of P10,000 and another addition of P50 for employers.
Nagkaisa Labor Coalition is addressing Congress as the imposition of an increase
is mandated by Republic Act 11199 and therefore inevitable unless a new law is enacted to amend RA 11199.
“We also urge President Rodrigo Duterte to review the political appointment of SSS commissioners. During his administration, no workers' representatives from TU (trade union) were appointed to the existing post reserved for the workers in the Social Security Commission,” the labor group said.
They added that the “present political appointees distorted tripartism” and the appointment of workers' representative is in contravention to the mandate of Section 3, Paragraph 2, requiring three commissioners from the workers.
“This is also a defiance of ILO Convention 144 requiring tripartism in decision making involving the workers and employers,” Nagkaisa added. “Never in the history of the SSS that trade unions are not represented at the Social Security Commission except in this administration.”
Nagkaisa also appealed for an appropriate budgetary allocation for government contribution to the SSS as required by Section 20 of RA 11199, adding that “since the beginning of the operation of the SSS except for the P500,000 seed money, only the employers and workers have been contributing to support the SSS.”