Minimum wage: Justice, not charity

BREAKTHROUGH

- ELFREN S. CRUZ

In the past encyclicals of Pope Francis, he wrote that every family is entitled to a living wage. Here in the Philippines, researchers at IBON calculate that a family living wage covering food, housing, health care, education and other essentials for a family of five is roughly P14,885 a month. This is approximately P1,205 to P1,221 per day.

While this is an ideal aspiration, the business community has said that this level of wages would be too high a target for the Philippine economy.

The current daily minimum wage in the Metro Manila region is P645 a day. Outside Metro Manila, the minimum wage ranges from P336 to P560 per day.

Even the highest metropolitan wage rate of P645 daily is below poverty threshold. A family of four or five trying to live on the minimum wage today faces impossible choices of which bills to pay or what to eat. For a minimum wage earner, the thought of even a decent home and minimum health care is out of reach. Certainly, no society can claim moral high ground while knowingly enforcing a wage that is less than a household's poverty threshold.

Congress is presently debating a legislated increase in the daily minimum wage. The House of Representatives has already approved a minimum wage increase of P200 a day. The Senate was unable to pass the minimum wage bill when it adjourned this month. Hopefully, in the coming session this July, the Congress will be able to agree on, at the very least, a P200 minimum wage increase.