PGMA asks DOLE to speed up wage hike negotiations
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo recently ordered Labor and Employment Secretary Marianito Roque to fast track ongoing wage hike negotiations with the respective regional wage boards [RWB] on the workers demand for a P75 per day salary increase.
In her keynote address in the Labor Day celebration held at the SMX Convention Center in the Mall of Asia, President Arroyo also stressed that under her 9 ½-years administration, the employed population swelled from 27 million to 36 million, with an average job creation of one million jobs each year.
The President thanked the numerous labor federations and unions and other sectors for crafting the Labor Agenda 2010-2015, which sums up the labor expectations of the different economic sectors in the next five years.
In a nutshell, the expectations include higher wages, more secure working conditions (and their objection to contractualization), better recognition for labor unions and organizations of the informal sector, women, children and others; and a better labor justice system.
The President said we will work hard to achieve these expectations within my term.”
The President said her reform programs have spared the country from the debilitating effects of the global financial crisis and the food crisis before that and could very well stand the challenges ahead.”
She said that during last year’s global financial crisis, the cooperation of the labor sector helped the government succeed in its emergency employment initiatives such as the Comprehensive Livelihood Emergency Employment Program (CLEEP), the Out of School Youth Serving Towards Economic Resiliency (OYSTER), Nurses Assigned in the Rural Sector (NARS) and the Youth Information Technology Opportunities (YOUTH-ITO), among others.
“We allotted P1 billion for such programs but we used so far P200 million and the balance will now be used for training the unemployed and underemployed, the youth, the informal sectors to acquire skills that can make them employable in areas like BPO [business process outsourcing] and IT (information technology),” the President said.
The President disclosed that Philippine minimum wages ranging from P148 to P256 are higher than those in Vietnam, China, Indonesia and Thailand, which are richer than us.”
The President also said that industrial strikes have gone down dramatically from 300 in 1998 to four in 2009 and zero for 2010 and this has given rise to more investments, more jobs, higher productivity and higher wages.”
She said that government salaries have gone up and will continue to increase in 2010 until 2012 under the salary standardization law.
On the Labor Agenda’s complaint about the inadequate labor justice system, the President said the country now has 46 labor arbiters that will ensure a faster processing of labor cases pending with the National Labor Relations Commission.