Unfair trade and unfair labor practices, not wage hikes causes unemployment

Workers will never give in or compromise with DoLE, business groups on legislated wage increase

Labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) today lashed at Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) Secretary Arturo Brion for blatantly siding with business and employers' groups in opposing the P125 wage hike bill already approved by the House of Representatives. "Brion's stance further affirmed DoLE's preference towards the interest of employers," said KMU Chairperson Elmer Labog.

"All the antiquated arguments and 'economic doomsday' forecasts that wage hikes will cause massive unemployment and economic crisis, as mouthed by Brion and executives of ECOP, PCCI and other business groups are expressed in the name of protection of profit and business interests. The P125 legislated wage hike campaign has become a life and death struggle for Filipino workers. We have fought for this for eight long years. We will never in this lifetime will we give up or compromise the Filipino peoples' struggle for survival," the labor leader said.

"We have answered these arguments way, way back when the P125 legislated wage hike bill was first filed in Congress by Rep. Crispin Beltran in 2001. Unemployment is brought about by the government's own doing, that is, the promotion of unfair trade and unfair labor practices attuned to globalization, Labog stressed."

"Then and now, employers groups made clear their aversion to any wage increase. Now that the wage hike bill made it through the Congress, we have more reasons to rally and push for the implementation of the legislated wage hike," Labog said.

"Workers are not asking for too much. We only want to live and provide for our families. Even the P125 is just an economic relief to tide us over severe economic crisis. How do businessmen expect workers to live decently with the current slave wage levels and steadily rising cost of living?" the labor leader asked. He estimated that the latest increase in LPG prices combined with recent price hikes of foodstuff and other basic goods will cost a family of six additional monthly expenses of P600-800 compared to last quarter of the previous year."

He added, "Employers are just too greedy to share a slice of their profit to their workforce. Like we have said before, employers should not make workers choose between hellish jobs and hellish wages.

Workers are united in this fight for economic relief and we will not give in or compromise to whatever alternative that DoLE or business groups will offer in place for a legislated wage increase. It's about time workers earn the victory of this eight-year old struggle for an across-the-board, legislated wage increase."

KMU will troop to ECOP and DoLE offices in the next days to contest the opposition to the legislated wage increase. The labor group initiated the across-the-board P125 wage hike proposal in 1999 and was filed as bill to the Congress in 2001.