TELL IT TO THE MARINES, MR. PRESIDENT

I think the President has grossly overstated the effect of the P125/day increase in minimum wage that the labor sector is asking, when he computed it as follows: P125 x 22 days per month x 13 months per year times 40 million workers, and thus arrived at P1.4 trillion additional business cost per year.,  That computation simply defies plane logic.  The workers are asking for an increase in minimum wage.  Therefore, plain common sense suggests that that increase, if granted, applies only to workers on minimum wage, not necessarily to the total 40 million employees that we have, and most specifically to unorganized labor only, or those who have no union, and ergo, whose only chance to improve their working terms and conditions is the government.  This unorganized sector, receiving only the legal minimum wage, is undeniably only a very miniscule portion of the 40 million workers the President has used in his computation -- quite conveniently at that.

Of course, I realize the fact that in our related experiences in the past, the government had also allowed certain increases to other employees (whose prevailing daily wage is just slightly above minimum) to take care of possible pay distortions that the new minimum wage increase might entail.  But even if their said wage may in the interim suffer from some distortion, only very few, certainly not all the 40 million employees, are entitled to such pay-distortion adjustment.  At the very worst, those that have unions, could easily ask for even much higher adjustment in their next CBA.  Moreover,  the 40 million workers refer to all members of the labor force, including supervisors, professionals and perhaps even managerial staff whose salaries are way above the prevailing minimum wage and therefore need not be pay-adjusted.  At the very best, the only employees who really stand to benefit from the legislated minimum wage adjustments are those who, being unorganized, can not negotiate for higher pay and to whom, very much less, their respective employers do provide any merit rating pay adjustment system.  Government employees, also part of the 40 million workers the President was talking about, need not likewise be benefited by any legislated minimum wage adjustment because they do receive their annual pay increase under the government's Salary Standardization system.  In short, the President's computations are downright self-serving and grossly exaggerated: clearly at the expense of the poorest of the poor in our midst and times.

Chances are it was the business and industry sector of Philippine society that may have fed this pathetically wrong arithmetic to the President, who in turn had outright swallowed it hook, line and sinker. This sector has always told all past Presidents that they might be forced to lay off employees, or they would raise their commodity prices, every time the poorest workers of our society asks for a minimum wage adjustment.  The government has long been virtually held hostage by this sector in this fashion.  I thought PNoy was of a different breed when I voted for him.  I was wrong!  And so, to him I now shout all my voices horse:  Mr. President, you tell your very poor arithmetic to the Marines!