After Metro Manila’s minimum wage for the private sector increased by P40 last week, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) urged the government on Sunday to similarly increase salaries for government employees.

In a statement issued on Sunday, ACT Chairperson Vladimir Quetua said, “It is similarly urgent and important for the government also to raise the salaries of public school teachers and all other government employees as they also bear the brunt of the continually high inflation and expected more hikes in electricity, water, and transportation costs. Not to mention teachers’ low salaries in comparison to other professions such as nurses and uniformed personnel.”

“The best the government can do to fulfill its constitutional and most fundamental mandate to its people is to recognize the real conditions of workers and employees, enact living wages across all sectors, strengthen the local economy, and heed the people’s longstanding demand for national industrialization,” he added.

40 peso increase “a mere token”

On June 29, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) announced that the Metro Manila wage board had approved a P40 increase in the minimum wage for workers in private establishments.

The raise results in an increase of the minimum wage in the region “from P570 to P610 for the non-agriculture sector and from P533 to P573 for the agriculture sector, service, and retail establishments employing 15 or less workers and manufacturing establishments regularly employing less than 10 workers,” according to DOLE.

In response, ACT said the P40 minimum wage increase for Metro Manila-based workers is “a mere token” as well as “a pittance and a slap in the face of workers who are the backbone of our economy.”

“The P40 increase in the minimum wage is a mere token that fails to address the rising cost of living, inflation, and the growing demands of Filipino workers in the private sector,” Quetua said.

“This meager increase remains inadequate in providing workers with a living wage, falling significantly short of meeting the P1,160 family living wage [that] a five-member Filipino family needs to survive,” he added.

Arkipelago News file photo/Andres Bonifacio Jr.