With Christmas just in the offing, the proposal of Sen. Ralph Recto to raise the tax-exemption threshold of the 13th Month Pay from P30,000 to P60,000 is surely good news. The bad news is, not everybody will benefit from it; only employees earning more than P30,000 a month, and there are not too many of them, anyway.
More than three decades after the passage of the Labor Code, one of whose principal objectives was to encourage collective bargaining, the bigger bulk of our working populace has yet been the unorganized sector -- for whom joining a labor union resembles joining the Katipunan in Bonifacio's times: one may not be jailed for insurrection but he puts his job security in great peril. Our unscrupulous employers should admit this grim reality, at least to themselves in good conscience, if not really to others. Unarguably still the most marginalized sector of Philippine society even after the spawning of that political animal called party-list system, this sector continues to depend solely and very precariously upon the minimum provisions of the Code, some of which have either grown obsolete or are deemed stupid from the very beginning.
For example, what whale of a difference does exist between a regular holiday and a special holiday for our laws to give higher premium pay to the former than to the latter? As it stands, a worker is paid twice his daily wage for working on a regular holiday, but gets only 30% on top of his basic wage if he works on a special holiday. Too, a daily rated employee who does not work on a regular holiday is guaranteed his normal wage for that day; he does not receive any pay if the holiday happens to be "special." Some says it is not the fault of an employee that a holiday is declared, so he need not suffer a sudden loss in pay -- that is, the money to buy his meal for the day -- simply because of a holiday. That is for me a stupid alibi! Truth is, regular holidays being in the calendar as early as January each year, as against the relatively unforeseen special holidays, it is more on the latter than on the former that a daily paid worker unduly suffers a loss of the money with which to buy his daily meal, strictly speaking. At any rate, isn't it the present practice of the government to proclaim and list down all holidays, regular or special, even before the close of any given year? Moreover, while relatively shorter workweeks, higher overtime/night-premium pay rates and longer vacation, sick and other leave entitlements than those provided by the Labor Code have long been quite common in many local industries, the unorganized labor sector just keeps looking desperately on the sidelines.
The more for sure will they look in envy at Recto's proposal. Without intending to sound ingrate, that it will benefit only employees belonging to the good senator's salary bracket cannot but leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
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