Salary hike a bane

EDITORIAL

Public employees are saying the pay hike proposed by the administration supposedly to upgrade the salaries of around 1.3 million government workers is long overdue, too little, too late and would mean prolonged salary freeze.

Confederation for the Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (Courage) national president Ferdinand Gaite in a statement said the P226 billion salary hike under the proposed Salary Standardization Law (SSL) 2015 will benefit more government officials and executives while rank-and-file public servants will receive pittance.

He said employees,most of them receiving minimum pay of P9,000.00 a month whose salary have been frozen since 2012 would be given raise of only P500 a year. He detailed it as just P42.00 a month or P2.00 a day. He described it as not even enough to pay for a one-way jeepney fare to work.

“It is sugarcoated to become acceptable to the public amidst the recently exposed scandalous millions of bonuses and allowances of state officials,” he said.

The All Workers Unity (AWU) also criticized Malacañang for insulting government workers with the SSL 2015. The organization of public employees and workers from the private as well as agriculture sector stated the proposal is a shameless maneuver to bloat high government official' salaries like corporate executives while nailing state workers' salary to starvation level.

Gaite said using compensation of the private sector to fix state salaries, SSL 2015 will stall the minimum salary, Salary Grade 1, from P9,487 to P11,000+ within four years starting 2015. He added that the highest meanwhile which is Salary Grade 33 will balloon from P120,000 to almost P400,000 to compete with corporate executives compensation.

Gaite said that the proposed salary hike will be given in a span of four years meaning the employees’ salaries would be frozen at starvation levels and by the time the adjustment is complete from P9,000 to P11,068 in 2019, the real value is already lost to inflation and long way behind the cost of living.

“Worse, they proceeded in using the private sectors’ minimum wages to determine state workers’ salaries instead of making it competitive to the rising cost of living,” he stressed.

AWU stated that all SSL's were all plain mockery of the state workers who were the ones doing the real job in the government. The alliance said that workers and low-ranking employees have been treated as a joke by the administration. “This administration’s “Tuwid na Daan” has paved way to make the rich get richer, the poor get poorer while swelling their pockets with trillions of taxes from low income earners,” the group added.

Gaite said it is unacceptable and there is no excuse even if the government claims the staggering increases ranging from 40-300% for the government officials including the President would not benefit the current executives because the truth remains that the pay hike shall benefit more those who are already receiving more. He said that top positions in government should never be compared to the private sector because public office is supposedly public service. Courage announced they are planning to mount a big protest action of state workers in the coming weeks to bring their position to Congress.