Zubiri sees veto of P200 wage bill
Senators on Monday rebuked their counterparts in the House of Representatives for their last-minute passage of a measure mandating an increase of P200 in the daily minimum pay of workers in the private sector, with Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri warning that this may only “sabotage” the Senate’s own version of the wage hike bill.
Speaking with reporters, Zubiri maintained that Senate Bill No. 2534, which he had principally authored, would be more palatable to both employees and employers as it proposed a legislative across-the-board salary increase of P100 for the private sector.
According to him, the initiatives of lawmakers to improve the economic conditions of Filipino workers will only be wasted if the House insists on passing a higher wage hike.
“I hope they would just adopt the Senate version and pass it into law because our workers need an additional boost to their income,” Zubiri said.
“We should not sabotage our efforts because if they push for [the House version], this will really be just sabotaged,” he said.
Enough safeguards
Adopting the Senate version, he added, would expedite the legislative process since they would do away with the convening of the bicameral conference committee.
He also gave an assurance that the Senate version of the bill, which the chamber approved on third and final reading in February last year, contained enough safeguards for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
“I stand [firm] that the P100 legislated wage hike has less chance of being vetoed. While we would want the P200 [salary increase] for Filipino workers, there’s a big chance that it would just be vetoed by President [Marcos],” Zubiri said.
He pointed out that the President had previously mentioned that any mandated wage adjustment must balance the interests of labor and business sectors.
“So I would like to appeal [to our House colleagues] for them to accept the P100 wage increase because for me, that’s the best balance for all sectors,” he said.
Sen. Joel Villanueva, the chair of the Senate labor committee, shared Zubiri’s concerns, noting that the House has not even transmitted to the Senate the final copy of its measure, which the lower chamber passed on June 4.
“I don’t want to give false hopes to our workers because there are those calling for the Senate to adopt [the House version]. But what do we adopt?” Villanueva told reporters in a separate interview.
Senate President Francis Escudero also wondered why House leaders did not raise the passage of the measure when they met during the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council on May 29.
House Deputy Speaker Raymond Democrito Mendoza, meanwhile, called for an expedited bicameral conference, ratification and endorsement for the President’s approval of the minimum wage hike measure before the 19th Congress ends.
“We are eager to work urgently with our Senate counterparts to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the wage hike bills—P200 and P100 respectively—and ratify the final version on the same day,” the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines representative said.
Appeal to senators
Mendoza, who is part of the bicameral conference committee, urged Escudero and Villanueva to “not deny the workers this much needed reprieve and to not succumb to the lazy economics of marketing the Philippines as a haven for cheap, unorganized labor to investors in ensuring their profitability instead of addressing the bigger business problems of high power costs, corruption, and ease of doing business.”
He pointed out that the legislated minimum wage hike was the result of years of exhaustive public hearings and deliberations in Congress where big businesses’ “doomsday scenarios” of massive inflation, unemployment and closures have been debunked and refuted.
