House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda says that increasing minimum wage is the right thing to do amid price hikes, particularly that of fuel.
This, as the Albay 2nd district representative described on Thursday, March 10 the Philippines’ current minimum wage as “severely, almost embarrassingly unprepared for price hikes to come this year”.
According to Salceda, the P537 a day minimum wage in the National Capital Region (NCR) would equate to P464 when put against 2018 prices.
“That means that today’s NCR minimum wage would be able to buy P73 less in goods in 2018. That is grossly unfair to the working class,” he said.
The latest fuel price hike which took effect last March 8 saw the price of gasoline go up by P3.60 per liter, diesel by P5.85 per liter, and kerosene by P4.10 per liter. Some lawmakers speculate that prices will jump significantly higher by March 15.
“Sadly, the NCR wage drives the needle for wages in the country, and NCR has seen no minimum wage increase since 2018. That leaves ordinary, working-class Filipinos totally unprepared for the price hikes that will inevitably come due to rising oil prices,” Salceda explained.
The Bicol solon further noted that increasing minimum wage is necessary to fuel the economy, adding that both workers and employers ought to share in the burden of price hikes.
“The 2021 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded for work that challenged the theory that higher minimum wages depresses employment. The idea that higher minimum wages is bad for jobs does not respect the fact that consumers are workers, and consumers need better wages to do more spending on businesses...Besides, increasing wages is the right thing to do at this point. The burden of price hikes has to be shared, between workers and their employers. Shared pain and shared benefits is the principle of a working economy,” Salceda expounded.
He also vowed to endorse petitions pushing for wage hikes to Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Secretary Silvestre Bello III.
“I hope it will boost the petitions of labor groups. Their petitions tend to be dismissed as ‘populist'. I would like to offer a different but fully supportive perspective to the proposal to raise wages,” he concluded.