METRO WAGE HIKE STILL POSSIBLE IN MAY -- DOLE
MANILA, APRIL 21, 2008 (STAR) By Mayen Jaymalin - Workers in Metro Manila are likely to get a pay increase next month.Acting Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said yesterday that the Regional Tripartite Wage and Productivity Board is expected to grant another round of pay hike in May.
“It’s no longer possible for the wage board to come out with a decision in time for Labor Day, but it’s still probable in May,” Roque said in an interview.
He noted that the wage board in Metro Manila already convened last April 11 and started the regular process in wage fixing.
He stressed that it would no longer be difficult for the wage board to resolve the pending wage petition since employers already recognized the need for salary adjustments.
“All the wage board has to do is determine the reasonable amount for both workers and employers,” Roque said.
Militant labor groups are set to mount a protest action to dramatize their demand for the immediate granting of a P125 legislated wage hike.
The Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and the Confederation for the Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (Courage) will lead the protest action at the House of Representatives in Quezon City.
The groups said they would push for the passage of the P125 wage hike for all workers in the private sector and P3,000 for government employees.
KMU chairman Elmer Labog said the looming food crisis is a sufficient basis for an immediate legislated wage increase.
He said the P125 wage hike bill, once passed into law, would provide immediate economic relief, even if temporary, against rising prices of basic commodities.
Meanwhile, Speaker Prospero Nograles said that lawmakers would resort to legislating a wage increase only if regional wage boards fail to do their job.
“These boards should act fast and swift, or the House would debate on and pass a legislated wage bill,” he said.
He stressed that there is no excuse for the regional wage bodies to dilly-dally in granting a wage increase since they were told to do so by President Arroyo more than a week ago.
Nograles did not give the boards a definite deadline, but Majority Leader Arthur Defensor told a news forum last Thursday that they should decide on the wage hike petitions by the second week of May.
Defensor said the House would not hesitate to abolish the wage boards if they fail to do their job within a reasonable time.
But Roque said it would take some time to study the wage increase for workers.
Nograles said the wage issue and the proposal to complement it by granting workers higher tax exemptions would be among the priorities of the House for the remainder of the first regular session of Congress, which ends in mid-June.
He expressed support for the proposal, saying, “It would increase the buying power of millions of Filipino families.”
“The adjustment in exemptions, coupled by an impending wage hike, would substantially increase the take-home pay of our workers and help mitigate the adverse effects of rising commodity prices,” he said.
Two other House members, Representatives Florencio Noel of the party-list group An Waray and Juan Edgardo Angara of Aurora, supported the proposal for higher tax exemptions.
“It will benefit a larger number of workers than a measure that will simply exempt minimum wage earners from income tax. This will apply to all employees, while at the same time sparing those receiving minimum pay from income tax,” Noel said.
Angara said it’s time that salaried workers, who have been contributing the bulk of value added tax collections, receive a tax relief.
In the Senate, Sen. Francis Escudero, ways and means committee chairman, frowned on the suggestion for higher tax exemptions for all workers.
Escudero, who belongs to the opposition, wants the benefit limited to minimum wage earners to avoid a larger revenue loss for the administration’s coffers.
To recoup whatever loss would result from higher exemptions, Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr. has recommended that Congress increase the rates of sin taxes.
“Let us act on my bill seeking to increase taxes on the so-called sin products like liquor and cigarettes. Higher sin taxes in exchange for higher exemptions for workers,” he said.
He said adjusting liquor and cigarette taxes would also promote better health since it would discourage smoking and drinking.
Valenzuela City Rep. Magtanggol Gunigundo II said the emerging consensus in the House is to increase the amount of combined tax-free income of a working couple from P96,000 to P150,000 a year, or from P8,000 to P12,500 a month.
The rates assume that both spouses are working and have four dependents, since each spouse is entitled to a personal exemption of P32,000 or P64,000 for both of them, and P8,000 for each dependent or P32,000 for four dependents. Thus, their total exemptions come up to P96,000, which is their tax-free income. Beyond that amount, they have to pay tax.
The congressmen’s proposal is to increase the combined annual tax-free income of a working couple with four dependents to P150,000 by adjusting exemptions for spouses with jobs to P35,000 and for dependents to P20,000 each.
Again, a couple would be entitled to this proposed higher level of tax-free income if both spouses are working and they have four qualified dependents. If only one spouse is working, the other cannot claim a tax exemption, the proposal said.
Gunigundo said a minimum wage earner in Metro Manila receives P362 a day.
“If he works for five days a week, he earns a total of P7,240 a month. If his wife is also a daily wage earner, they have a combined monthly income of P14,480. They will still have to pay tax on nearly P2,000 if the proposed P12,500 a month tax-free income is approved,” he said. – With Jess Diaz
Reported by: Sol Jose Vanzi
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by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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