MEZ workers call for wage hike

CEBU, Philippines — Some 300 workers from garment and electronics factories in the Mactan Economic Zone gathered yesterday to call for a wage hike. The workers said they support the pending ?150-across-the-board salary increase bill in the House of Representatives.

The Senate earlier approved a ?100-hike in minimum wage.

The Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) Workers Alliance spearheaded the assembly along with labor groups SENTRO and Partido Manggagawa (PM) in a basketball court in Barangay Buaya, Lapu-Lapu City.

The gathering also resolved to mobilize thousands of workers for the upcoming Labor Day commemoration.

The traditional Labor Day rally will highlight the demand for a wage hike along with opposition to Charter Change with the slogan of “Sahod itaas, Chacha i-atras” and “Chicha hindi chacha.”

Lapu-Lapu City Councilor Tino Aying joined the assembly, listened to the workers’ sentiments, and promised to relay the wage hike demand to Lapu-Lapu City Lone District Representative Cindi King Chan.

Aying, a former union president, said he will assist in the campaign for the passage of the legislated wage hike.

A highlight of the assembly was the speech of Erlinda Bardenas, a garment worker and a solo parent, who said that her minimum wage is not enough to support her family’s needs

“Therefore, I am forced to go into debt in order to make ends meet. This is the experience of majority of MEPZ workers. We survive through taking out loans with our ATMs as collateral. Even as we make do with poverty wages, we know that our employers and the global brands we produce for, wallow in so much profit from our labor,” said Bardenas in a statement released by PM-Cebu.

Speakers refuted the doomsday narrative of employers that a salary hike will lead to an economic catastrophe, factory closures, and job losses.

PM-Cebu spokesman Dennis Derige said that ecozone firms and global brands are very profitable.

Derige said that labor productivity in MEPZ factories is such that it takes only minutes of work for workers to create the value of their wages. But while labor productivity has risen by 50% from 2001 to 2016, real wages remain stagnant.

“So, firms are in no danger of being affected by a ?150 wage recovery. ?150 is not even a real wage hike but just a wage recovery demand,” Derige said. — (FREEMAN)