SOMEONE ELSE’S WINDOWS: May Day

H. Marcos C. Mordeno

May 2, 2012
5:18 am

MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/1 May) – As many may have expected but hoped against, President Benigno S. Aquino III thumbed down organized labor’s demand for a legislated P125 wage increase. His reason for ruling out an increase was the same as that of all his predecessors starting from his own president-mother – it will hurt the economy.

By his own calculations, granting the increase would cost P1.43 trillion a year, an amount that he said was bad for an economy that was worth P8 to P9 trillion.

Obviously worried for the business sector but insensitive to the plight of wage earners the real value of whose salaries have greatly diminished over the years due to inflation, Aquino raised the specter of businesses closing down and retrenchment of over half a million workers.

“How can the businessmen recover this? Isn’t it that they’re going to raise the price of goods and services? Aren’t they going to cut costs by laying off employees? Has anybody explained that there are 527,000 Filipinos who could lose jobs this year and next year if this is implemented?” Aquino said in his Labor Day speech delivered in Filipino.

At the very least, we expect our leaders to work out a reasonable compromise between capital and labor.[]/a> with |||

Aquino, however, not only rejected the demand; he added insult to injury by implying that the workers were being stupid for not studying the supposed implications of a wage hike.

Having said that, the President consigned the demand to the regional wage boards, which have only granted negligible increases over long periodic intervals.

Aquino was out of touch with reality when he directly linked price increases to salary hike. The prices of goods and services are bound to increase with or without wage hikes as they always have.||| |||buy tadalista online with |||

This has always been the line of the business sector that government officials including the president love to echo every time the workers demand a wage hike. I have yet to hear a president talking from the side of the workers.

Why, no administration has ever solved, for example, the widespread problem of non-remittance of social security and health care premiums, and the practice of many employers of making their employees sign two payrolls, one indicating the legally mandated wage and the other the actual salary received. But since the workers – mostly contractual – are afraid to lose their jobs, they won’t mind this setup.

In other words, aside from denying the benefits due to their employees many business owners are following the prescribed minimum wage only on paper.

If the government cannot stop these practices, how can we expect it to feel empathy for the worsening economic condition of the working class? Or perhaps, Aquino was still trying to cope with the loss of the family-owned Hacienda Luisita to its workers.

So, Mr. Palace Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda, Sir, where’s the good news?||| |||buy cymbalta online with |||

(H. Marcos C. Mordeno mainly writes on the environment, human rights and politics. He can be reached at hmcmordeno@gmail.com.)

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