UNITY STATEMENT

We, workers, employees, unionists, peasants, urban poor, migrant-workers, government employees, legislators, media practitioners, faith-based leaders, cultural workers, academicians, human rights advocates, youth and students, concerned people unite in the need for an urgent legislation and enactment of a P125 across-the-board nationwide wage hike.

We are united that workers should be given their due share in the creation of wealth and economic production. Labor should be compensated, at the very least, by the assurance that the worker has the capacity to provide for more than the basic necessities of his family. The Philippine Constitution mandates, and a just society necessitates, the state to ensure decent living and economic stability for all.

We are dismayed that wages have long been frozen at levels far from the cost of living. From 2001-06, wages increased only by 18.6\%, while cost of basic goods rised by 38\%. The present national average of the minimum wage is just a meager 34\% of the P871 average living wage.

We suffered greatly from the recent spate of price hikes, which only heightened the urgency for a substantial wage increase. The nation has endured severely the sudden upsurge of prices due to global economic crisis, and people have been pushed further to the thresholds of survival.

We were betrayed by the regional wage boards that only granted measly and insulting wage adjustments. For its 20 years of existence, regional wage boards only served to divide, deceive, and give grossly inadequate wage adjustments to workers. The government further allows numerous exemptions and high noncompliance to wage board orders.

We are displeased by the subsidy and dole out programs of the national government that only seek to temper the growing unrest of the people, and to project publicity for its own political agenda.

Thus, we resolve to unite, to propagate, and to mobilize for the achievement of a substantial wage increase in the immediate future.