Take your job seriously, stop joking–labor to DU30

A COALITION of over 40 of the biggest labor groups in the country said their New Year’s wish for President Duterte is for him not to take his governance as a joke and instead perform his functions seriously and be a dependable leader.

The Nagkaisa Labor Coalition issued the statement in the wake of criticisms hounding the President over his recent remarks on his confession to a priest that he abused his own maid when he was young and his new tirades against the Catholic Church, including calling the Holy Trinity doctrine “silly.”

Nagkaisa also advised Presidential Spokesman and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo to tell the President that “his jokes are no longer jokes” but “statements downgrading women and mocking religious beliefs offensive to Catholics and other Christians.”

“The Nagkaisa Labor Coalition, the broadest alliance of trade unions and workers associations in the country, calls on Secretary Panelo to tell President Rodrigo Duterte to take governance not as a joke but with with some seriousness. It will be unfortunate if his administration will look like as if it is a ‘Joker’ administration. In a Batman movie, Joker was a psychopathic mass murderer with a sadistic sense of humor,” Nagkaisa Chairman and Federation of Free Workers President Jose Sonny G. Matula said in a statement. “We call on Duterte to be a dependable leader. To make regular jobs as the norm not as joke.”

Instead of making “offensive and unproductive jokes,” Nagkaisa urged the President to use his “residual power” to persuade the Senate to expedite the passage of SB 1826 or the proposed legislation strengthening the right to security of tenure and ending endo, the catch-all term for work arrangements that circumvent the norm of regularizing workers who make the cut after their six-month probationary period.

“We call also for higher penalty for violation on the prohibition on ‘labor-only’ contracting and other abusive forms of contractualization. Otherwise, his election promise will become a joke. Other than regularizing the employees, he ought to highlight that the existing law [Art. 303 of Labor Code] provides fines for violation of prohibited acts which ranges from a dismal P1,000 to P10,000 only,” Matula said.

The House of Representatives has already passed the counterpart bill, HB 6908 in January 2018, sponsored by Akbayan and Trade Union Congress of the Philippines Party-List.

“Duterte had already certified SB 1826 as urgent but it appears the Senate is taking his certification as a joke. The senators are foot-dragging to delay its passage,” he said.

The coalition also said Panelo’s explanation that the “anecdotes” were only jokes or “inimitable allegorical” or “hyperbole” were “specious and hollow.”

Matula added, “We see these alleged jokes as not at all laughable.” Nagkaisa also noted that although the “laughable anecdote” of the President on the abuse of maid to highlight the “sexual abuse” on him of a priest can no longer be considered a crime as this was covered by prescription—having happened many years ago—the President should still “not flaunt it with alacrity.”

“As the country enters 2019, we wish Duterte to make governance not as a joke but respectfully urge him to perform his official functions in accord with his oath of office, that is: “preserve and defend its Constitution, execute its laws, do justice to every man, and consecrate myself to the service of the Nation.” - Bernadette D. Nicolas 

With fuel tax hike, workers face tough 2019

“Workers will be facing a serious challenge in 2019 because of the tax reform package 2. The government wants to call it TRABAHO but it’s a misnomer,” said Julius Cainglet, vice president of the Federation of Free Workers (FFW), the country’s oldest trade union.

MANILA, Philippines — Workers see tougher times in 2019 as the second phase of the controversial tax reform package – which takes effect today – threatens to further push up prices of fuel and basic goods and hurt employment.

“Workers will be facing a serious challenge in 2019 because of the tax reform package 2. The government wants to call it TRABAHO but it’s a misnomer,” said Julius Cainglet, vice president of the Federation of Free Workers (FFW), the country’s oldest trade union.

TRABAHO, which stands for Tax Reform for Attracting Better and Higher Quality Opportunities, is how the government wants the second round of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law to be officially called.

“For the past year, workers suffered from the high inflation rate and if the government pushes through with the implementation of additional excise tax this January, prices of goods will definitely go up again, so it will present a big problem for the workers,” Cainglet pointed out.

He also called for a serious scrutiny of infrastructure projects under the government’s Build, Build, Build program.

“We do recognize that the Build, Build, Build program will bring potential employment. But we still need to see the type of projects because it may only open vacancies for technical experts that would come from other countries,” Cainglet said.

He said infrastructure projects may also be handled by big contractors that may sub-contract workers. “Do we want just additional, but not decent, employment?”

Sonny Matula, Nagkaisa labor coalition chairman, said illegal contractualization remains rampant despite the regularization of over 400,000 casual workers in 2018.

“We do recognize that the campaign for regularization encourages employers to voluntarily regularize their workers. However, contractualization is still the norm,” Matula said.

He said the penalty provided under existing regulations entice employers to just commit labor-only contracting and continue to violate labor standards.

Moreover, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) could not inspect all commercial establishments and check on violations due to lack of labor inspectors, Matula said.

He said the government must also address potential problems that may arise from a new phenomenon called artificial intelligence.

“The government must support future of work programs in response to the artificial intelligence phenomenon promoting employment of not only workers, but robots,” Matula said.

The Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), for its part, warned of “imminent and increasing exodus” of young, talented and skilled Filipinos with the implementation of the second tranche of the tax reform package.

In a statement, the BMP through its senatorial bet Leody de Guzman said “the best and the brightest of Filipinos have been leaving the country with the continued implementation of the neoliberal policies of deregulation, liberalization, privatization, contractualization ever since the Cory Aquino administration.”

He added the “runaway inflation induced by the oil excise taxes of the Duterte administration since last year may be the final straw to break the camel’s back.”

The increasing exodus of young adults to greener pastures abroad was also shown in a Gallup poll conducted from 2015 to 2017.

The poll revealed that 16 percent of highly educated Filipinos will likely leave the country to work or live abroad.

“Unfortunately, with the taxation shift from income to consumption, the tax burden is more felt by the poor although they did not benefit from the increased exemptions to income taxes. Worse, they are overtaxed and yet they hardly feel the social services and safety nets that were promised to be part of tax reform measures,” he maintained.

More price hikes

The New Year will usher in the second round of increase in taxes on diesel, gasoline, cooking gas and other oil products under the TRAIN law.

Starting Tuesday, the tax on diesel will go up by P2 per liter, from the current P2.50 to P4.50, while the levy on gasoline will increase also by P2 to P9 per liter.

The excise tax on cooking gas or liquefied petroleum gas will jump by P1 per kilogram to P2.

Tax on bunker oil, which is used for producing electricity, will rise from P2.50 to P4.50 per liter.

Levies on other oil products like asphalt and waxes will go up from P7 to P9 per liter or kilogram. Aviation gas tax will remain at P4 per liter.

Like the first adjustment in 2018, the second round will be higher than listed because TRAIN imposes a tax on tax: the increase will be levied on the 12-percent value added tax.

Thus, the P1 tax increment will actually be P1.12, and P2 will be P2.24.

The second round of increase is expected to cause a domino effect on prices of products and services, including transportation, fares and electricity. The steady rise in consumer prices – economists call it inflation – was largely blamed on the TRAIN law.

Marikina Rep. Romero Quimbo, who heads the Liberal Party bloc in the House, said Assistant Finance Secretary Teresa Habitan had told congressmen that the Department of Finance was projecting a P40-billion revenue loss if the 2019 fuel tax increase were suspended for the whole year.

“That could easily be offset through more efficient tax collection and through the various tax measures that the House has approved,” he said.

Among the approved measures were two bills increasing levies on alcohol and tobacco products and another bill seeking the grant of a general tax amnesty next year to thousands of delinquent taxpayers.

Rep. Michael Romero of 1-Pacman, one of the authors of the amnesty bill, said the proposed amnesty grant is among President Duterte’s legislative priorities.

“It aims to give delinquent taxpayers the opportunity to have a clean slate by paying an amnesty tax and to be fully compliant on their tax obligations moving forward,” he said.

He said based on previous amnesty grants, the government could generate tens of billions of pesos from the planned new reprieve.

“It’s a one-time grant that we hope taxpayers with delinquencies would avail themselves of,” he added.

Romero pointed out that “even if just half or one-fourth of the revenue target is collected, it would be a big boost to government resources that could fund vital services.”

He said he expects many families that have inherited properties to take advantage of the amnesty offer since the estate tax has been cut from as high as 20 percent to just six percent under the TRAIN law.

Aside from the reduced tax, the law increased the standard deduction from P1 million to P5 million and exempts a family home worth up to P10 million (the previous limit was P1 million) from the estate levy, he stressed.

The proposed amnesty would cover 2017 and prior years. An applicant would be required to file with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) an amnesty return accompanied by a notarized statement of total assets as of Dec. 31, 2017. The applicant would pay an amnesty tax of two percent of such assets.

On estate tax liabilities, the amnesty levy is six percent.

Deputy speaker and Batangas Rep. Raneo Abu said the proposed estate tax liabilities amnesty “will promote the interest of heirs in developing inherited real properties and boost revenues of local government units.”

“It will also result in the updating of real property records and titles,” he said. – Mayen Jaymalin (The Philippine Star) with Jess Diaz, Cecille Suerte Felipe, Sheila Crisostomo

Fix wages nationwide, labor groups tell Duterte

As the P25 minimum wage increase for Metro Manila workers took effect on Thursday, labor group Federation of Free Workers (FFW) and affiliates belonging to a coalition called Nagkaisa urged President Duterte to form a presidential commission that would study the creation of a national wage fixing mechanism.

In a statement, FFW said the P25 wage increase, approved by the Regional Tripartite Wage and Productivity Board, was “latest proof of how wages fixed under the mechanism deepens inequality rather than eradicate chronic poverty.”

Failure

It said the group and other Nagkaisa affiliates believed “the meager increase simply fits into the 1989 template” created by Republic Act No. 6727, which bases wage increases on employers’ capacity to pay rather than on workers’ standard of living.

FFW said during the presidential election campaign, Duterte recognized that setting wages by regions was a failure.

“He himself announced the need to overhaul the system,” said Sonny Matula, FFW president.

“But until today, no executive action has been done so far to walk his pledge,” Matula added.

Another labor group, Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP), said workers were unable to feel the impact of the P25 wage increase because of inflation.

Purchasing power

Alan Tanjusay, ALU-TUCP spokesperson, said the purchasing power of P25 nowadays was just P17.50.

“It has no impact,” Tanjusay said.

The government, he added, should step in and fill the gap by giving workers a monthly food voucher worth at least P500.

Tanjusay said Duterte had “neither said yes nor no to our proposal.”

“So we remain hopeful,” he added. - By: Tina G. Santos - Reporter / @santostinaINQ

Labor coalition urges Duterte to fix ‘weak’ region-based wage-setting system

LEADERS of Nagkaisa, a coalition of over 40 of the biggest labor groups in the country, called on President Duterte to finally reform “weak” region-based wage fixing system.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the coalition said the reported P25-wage hike approved by the Regional Tripatite Wages and Productivity Board-National Capital Region (RTWPB-NCR) exposed the flaws in Republic Act (RA) 6727, or the Wage Rationalization Act of 1989.

Nagkaisa said labor representatives in these boards are usually outvoted by three representatives from the government and two from employers in deciding the amount of the wage hike.

It said this usually result to a minimal wage hike for workers.

“It manifests a subdued or tamed bargaining power of labor in the RTWPB where representation is not in parity with employers and government representatives who hold the majority,” Nagkaisa said.

Nagkaisa Chairman and Federation of Free Workers (FFW) President Jose Sonny G. Matula urged Duterte to fulfill his campaign promise of restoring the national minimum wage mechanism.

“There is a need to revise our law on minimum wage [fixing], which was placed under [the jurisdiction] of the regional wage boards in 1989,” Matula said.

Prior to RA 6727, it were lawmakers who decided on the minimum wage of workers nationwide.

Matula also appealed to include a provision of “industry-bargaining” approach in deciding minimum-wage rates.

Under the said scheme, minimum-wage rates will differ depending on industry rather than geographical location.

Nagkaisa expressed disappointment over the said P25-wage hike in NCR since it was way below the P334-wage hike being proposed by the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), which it also supports.

Last week Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III denied the P25-pay hike is already final. He said he will be announcing the official new amount of the minimum-wage increase in NCR in the morning of November 5.

TUCP Vice President Louie Corral warned a P25-wage hike in NCR will lead to a widespread industrial unrest. - By Samuel P. Medenilla