IN RESPONSE to the clamor by labor groups for a national minimum wage of P750 to P800 a day, employers are raising disaster and doomsday scenarios of closures, layoffs, and inflation.
Rene Magtubo of Partido ng Manggagawa, in a statement yesterday, May 30, said that behind the panic mode of employers is their opposition to any sharing of the wealth that has been created by labor in more than a decade of robust economic growth.
Even as inflation has undeniably eroded workers nominal wages, below the radar inequality is worsening due to the stagnation of real wages while productivity has to boom.
From 2001 to 2016, labor productivity grew by at least 50 percent, yet the real wages did not grow at all, the statement said.
Workers have been denied their so-called "fair share in the fruits of production."
Workers, as well as the economy, will benefit more if the government will exercise its police power to compel employers to share the wealth produced by the blood and sweat of laborers.
Employers profit from workers. They utilize the labor power of the latter to produce goods and services sold to the market.
But employers pay workers less in terms of wages and benefits than the amount they have produced in the production of goods and services, the statement said.
The widening gap between workers' wages and the rising cost of living and the prevalence of poverty in society are evidence of this unjust system of wage setting and wealth distribution, the group said.
Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) reiterated its call to President Rodrigo Duterte to certify urgent House Bill 7787 aimed to abolish the regional wage boards and provides a national minimum wage of Php 750 to all workers and penalties to abusive employers.
PM also called on Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III to stand for and in behalf of workers' welfare by not speaking as if he was the secretary of the DTI.
