Mindanaotoday.com | Wage-order compliance
By: Uriel Quilinguing
AFTER almost four years, minimum wages of workers in non-agriculture and agriculture private establishments in Northern Mindanao have been adjusted with a P25 increase starting June 18 this year, following the issuance of Wage Order No. RX-21.
Admittedly, calls for wage increase were not responded to because of the coronavirus pandemic that sent government agencies on their toes. And many workers the private sector were laid off since employers could no longer pay them.
Since January this year, businesses resumed operations and new ones were opened as coronavirus diseases cases began to drop and vaccination coverage went up.
Hence, the wage-fixing process took off and completed after this year’s regular elections.
With a new wage order, employees in the private sector non-agriculture firms will be compensated ranging from P368 to P390 and those in agriculture sector from P356 to P378.
These used to be from 343 to P365 and from P331 to P353 back in 2018 under Wage Order No. RX-20.
On Dec. 16, this year, these figures could change once the second-trance of wage adjustments take effect, an additional P15 on daily minimum wages for both sectors. Thus, the new wage rates would be P405 and P393.
Just like in previous wage orders, most of those who would benefit are those in small and medium enterprises and to a certain extent including large-scale firms.
Those classified as micro, often employing less than 10 are likely to be exempted from wage orders, hence labor-employer negotiations take place.
Compliance with the mandated minimum wages has always been a challenge, a concern Department of Labor-10 inspectors must relentlessly address.
Notable though was the 94.41% compliance rate involving 4,580 business establishments in 2021 on Wage Order No. RX-20 when the DOLE-10 reported in its Regional Socio-Economic Profile for June 2022.
This is laudable because adherence to the mandated wages was in the midst of a pandemic.
Employers who kept their businesses afloat since the second quarter of 2020 until the end of 2021 were resilient and must have the innovative acumen to survive the onslaught of exponential rise of Covid-19 infections.
Likely, their products and services are essential even in a pandemic.
The region’s economy contracted but not as much as other regions and the country as a whole, according to the National Economic and Development Authority-10. And Northern Mindanao was the first to take steps at recovery from economic meltdown.
The effects of new wage rates cannot be felt immediately. Once the second tranche of adjustment come into place before the year end, compliance on Wage Order No. RX-21 must be measured once again.
Let’s hope the compliance rate on wage order would still be P94.41%, if not higher.
(Uriel Quilinguing has been a journalist in print and broadcast (radio and TV) media for over four decades. Based in Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, Philippines, he is a former president of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club, had steered the Media Health Advocates, and chaired the local chapter of the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines.)
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