KMU to Aquino admin: Raise wages, enough of wage rate compliance rhetorics – KMU

Kilusang Mayo Uno lambasted today the recent bragging of the Department of Labor about the supposedly high compliance rate of companies to minimum wage rates.

“Our current minimum wage rates are shamefully low – mere compliance to it do not even serve justice,” KMU executive vice chairperson Joselito Ustarez said.

DOLE reported an 81% compliance rate among 35,000 establishments nation-wide surveyed since September 2010. Since that period also, DOLE implemented a program to achieve higher compliance with labor standards among firms. 

But KMU noted that such latest minimum wage rate compliance data is nothing substantially different with the 80.8% reported by DOLE in year 2007. The Ecumenical Institute for Labor and Education Research, moreover, noted that the average non-compliance rate from 1985 to 2003 was already at 21.5%.

“All throughout the country, we also receive numerous reports of non-compliance to minimum wage rates, especially among workers without unions,” Ustarez added. Only four percent of all wage and salary workers are unionized. 

“But beyond ensuring compliance, raising wage levels to a significant amount is the real demand of the people. In Noynoy’s first 6 months, he only granted an average of 15-peso meager increases in minimum wages of eight regions, while fully allowing huge price increases in oil, toll rates, and various basic goods,” Ustarez said. #