Palace denies ‘killing’ wage hike proposals
Although he has expressed general caution on legislated wage hikes, President Marcos supports moves for a workers’ minimum wage hike that both houses of Congress and the business sector have already agreed to be necessary, according to Presidential Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro.
It just so happened that the outgoing 19th Congress did not have enough time to agree on the amount of a wage hike law, but the matter will be reconsidered in the upcoming 20th Congress.
“The President is not against a wage increase or hike because it is for the benefit of our workers,” Castro said at a Palace briefing. “But we have a process. This is studied every year by our Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Boards (RTWPBs) in each region.”
Castro noted that the Senate passed its P100 wage hike bill (Senate Bill No. 2354) in February 2024 with little objections, even from employers, although business groups did warn of inflationary pressures from a legislated wage increase.
The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Employers Confederation of the Philippines and the Makati Business Club all warned that a legislated wage hike could push up prices while benefiting only minimum wage workers.
Nonetheless, the House of Representatives last week passed its P200 wage hike bill (House Bill No. 11376) without objections, suggesting that both houses recognize the need for a wage hike.
All that remained was for Congress’ bicameral conference committee to agree on an amount between P100 and P200, similar to previous wage hike negotiations, until Congress adjourned sine die without reconciling the two measures.
The Kabataan party list, which gained a seat in the 20th Congress, blamed the President for “killing” the wage hike bills by not certifying them as “urgent,” prompting the President Communications Office to respond that the President’s role in the legislative process—signing or vetoing the enrolled bill from the bicameral conference committee—had not come into play.
“Is the President a dictator? He is not. Let’s leave that discussion to Congress,” Castro said, adding that the wage hike bills would be refiled in the 20th Congress anyway.
However, critics claim that the House’s delayed actions were due, if not directly sought, to the President’s opinion that wage hikes should be decided at the level of RTWPBs.
For Senate President Francis “Chiz” Escudero, it was the House’s fault for passing a wage hike bill in the last days of the 19th when the Senate already passed its own version more than a year ago.
Escudero scored the House’s attempt to “pass the buck” to the Senate when it had more than an entire year to come up its wage hike bill, but waited until the closing days of the 19th Congress.
“Why did they act on this belatedly, then accuse us of delaying its passage? They did not pass this on time,” Escudero said. “Is this what they will always do? They also submitted the impeachment [articles against Vice President Sara Duterte] to us on our last session day.”
Escudero said he and Sen. Joel Villanueva met with House legislators to request that they just adopt the Senate version of the bill. But House spokesperson Princess Abante later claimed that the Senate killed the wage hike bill by not agreeing to bicameral conference committee meeting before the session adjourned.
