Mindanaotoday.com | RTWPB-10 grants workers’ pay hikes in NorMin
By: Uriel Quilinguing
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – The state’s wage-setting body in Northern Mindanao has granted a two-tranche adjustment in daily wages, bringing the take-home pay of non-agriculture workers in private sector to P403 starting mid-December this year from P356 that was fixed three years ago.
It also ordered a one-time P500-adjustment in monthly pay of household helpers from prevailing salary levels.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, in a press statement Monday, May 30, lauded the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPB) in Region 10 for acting in dispatch on wage adjustment petitions.
Bello said about 153,000 workers in private firms and more than 54,000 domestic workers in the region would likely benefit from the latest wage orders.
Chaired by Department of Labor-10 Regional Director Albert Gutib, the RTWPB-10 issued the new wage order 12 working days after the Regional Public Hearing on Minimum Wage Adjustment in Cagayan de Oro.
RTWPB-10 issued Wage Order No. RBX-21 for a P25 across-the-board increase and another P15 to P22 starting Dec. 16, this year; and Wage Order No. RBX-DW-03, which provided for P500 raise, bringing the monthly pay of domestic workers to P4,500 in cities and first-class towns and P3,500 elsewhere in the region.
Under the new wage order, daily minimum salaries of workers in the agriculture sector would be P393 from P353 that was set by Wage Order No. RBX-20 last October 2018.
Lawyer Proculo Sarmen, Regional Vice President for Northern Mindanao of the Associated Labor Union-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP), who presented the TUCP petition in the public hearing, said the wage board’s action will directly benefit the non-unionized workers.
Sarmen said those engaged in labor-only contracting business should have the conscience of paying the workers the salaries mandated by law, hinting many workers in the agriculture sector are still receiving P200 and even less per day.
From a high of 10,000 union members, ALU-TUCP has only about a thousand members in region 10 because of labor-only contracting scheme.
TUCP, in its petition filed last March 29, this year, sought for additional P413 wage adjustment which, if granted, could have increased the daily minimum wage in the region of P778 intended for all in the labor force.
ALU-TUCP Regional Operations Director Nicandro Borja, in reaction to the new orders, said they will negotiate for adjustments, taking into account “wage distortions” because union members have been getting more than the mandated salaries, under collective bargaining agreements.
Wage distortions refer to disturbances in wage differentials among groups of employees in an establishment that are drastically reduced or eliminated due to mandated wage increases.
Borja, who used to sit in the RTWPB-10, said the amounts granted in the wage orders could not really cover-up the high costs of basic goods and that of fuel products, still they are grateful new wage orders are out.
Once reviewed and affirmed by the National Wages and Productivity Commission, these will be published in “newspapers of general circulation” and implemented 15 days thereafter.