MANILA — The wage hike approved in the National Capital Region is "insulting", a lawmaker said on Monday. 

Gabriela Party List Representative Arlene Brosas said the P35 increase in the daily minimum wage of private workers approved by the wage board in Metro Manila fails to address the economic situation of many Filipino workers and their families.

Brosas said this amount is not enough to offset the impact of inflation on the price of food and non-food items.

• NCR workers to get P35 daily minimum wage hike

“Malaking insulto sa mga manggagawang Pilipino ‘yung ginagawang barya-barya o napakaliit talaga nung dagdag-sahod na ‘yun. Kahit doon sa makaagapay sa inflation na 3.9 percent ngayong June 2024, kulang na kulang talaga ‘yan," Brosas said. 

(This is a big insult to Filipino workers, this chump change wage hike. It's not even enough to compensate for the 3.9 percent inflation in June 2024.) 

The lawmaker said the measure seems to have been rushed in time for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr's State of the Nation Address. 

She noted that some groups were pushing for a P750 across-the-board wage hike.

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines also said the NCR wage increase was a “humiliation to struggling Filipino workers”.

"The workers are humiliated by the P35 increase! It is a slap on the face of every worker, even the resource persons, who underscored the imperative of raising workers' wages against the big lie that any increase is 'catastrophic,”  TUCP Vice President Luis Corral said in a statement

LEGISLATED WAGE HIKE

Brosas and TUCP continue to push for a legislated wage hike.

Last February, the Senate approved on the third and final reading a bill proposing a P100 increase in the daily minimum wage of workers in the private sector.

But at the House of Representatives, proposals for an across-the-board P150-P750 daily wage increase remain pending at the committee level.

“The TUCP and the Filipino workers turn to Congress as we have had enough of DOLE's diversionary schemes. Filipino working families have had enough of being fiddled around in the past 35 years," Corral said.

The proposed legislated wage hike is not among the priorities of the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council for the 19th Congress.