A group of education workers expressed dismay over the government’s “failure” to enact the significant salary increase that is at par with the living wage.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), in a statement, lamented that Jan. 15 marked the “first payday in 2024 with no salary increase.”

“Walang masagana sa bagong taon ng mga guro at kawani (There is no abundance for teachers and employees in the new year),” ACT Chairperson Vladimer Quetua said. “Unang payday, unang pain day sa 2024 (The first payday, the first pain day in 2024),” he added.

ACT, Quetua said, consistently pushed for a salary hike last year.

Quetua noted that the Salary Standardization Law (SSL) V concluded last year, thus, a new round of salary increases is expected in 2024.

SSL V, he noted, granted a “yearly minimal salary increase” for public sector employees ending in December 2023. “Hence, there is no decisive move by the government to ensure salary hikes,” ACT said.

ACT also lamented that the current administration “failed in its promise” to raise teachers' salaries while DepEd leadership remained “silent on the pleas of teachers and employees.”

Aside from not having additional salary, ACT noted that additional deductions await teachers due to the increased contributions to PhilHealth.

Meanwhile, ACT stressed that its call for a national minimum wage that would set the standard wage for private and public employees has “never been pushed forward as priority.”

This, ACT alleged, made private workers’ lives “more miserable” under this government that has only received a P40 increase amid the continuously increasing prices of basic commodities.

ACT pointed out that the low salaries of teachers in public and private schools  “spelled equally staggering hardships to Filipino teachers and education workers whose standards of living have plummeted due to skyrocketing prices of goods.”

Given this, the group challenged the administration to be “pro-teacher and pro-labor.”

Quetua said that the government must immediately raise the salaries of teachers to a decent level by setting the entry-level pay for teachers, whether in public or private schools, to P50,000.

ACT also urged the current administration to establish a national minimum wage of P33,000 for all employees and workers.