In support of the National Minimum Wage Act

We stand today on the verge of a limited but still significant victory for the working class in the Philippines.

Over seven decades ago, in 1951, the first-ever Minimum Wage Law was passed in the Philippines. Though this “minimum” was always inadequate and so many employers still managed to pay workers less than this minimum in the ensuing decades, this was still a big concession to the working class—a concession won through years of organizing and struggle by workers themselves.

In 1989, capitalists counter-attacked. Unable to abolish the minimum wage itself, they set about undermining it instead by making the minimum vary across provinces through the passage of the so-called “Wage Rationalization Act.” 

Part of the wave of neo-liberal “reforms” unleashed by the Aquino government during this period, the passage of this law was a major set-back for the proletariat and for other oppressed groups and a major win for the emerging big bourgeoisie in the country. 

Though they were now toiling just as hard as their counterparts in NCR, workers in the provinces were now entitled to lower wages than workers in NCR—even though the cost of living in these regions have moved closer and closer to the cost of living in NCR. The minimum wage in the city remained paltry; the minimum wage in the countryside even more so. Billionaires were getting richer and richer as the national government effectively forced local governments to compete with each other in who could offer the cheapest labor to them; millions of workers were struggling even harder to make ends meet.

But today, labor is fighting back. 

In recent years, more and more workers, unions and other labor organizations and progressive formations have been clamoring for the abolition of the regional wage boards and for setting a national minimum wage. During the 2022 elections, Laban ng Masa presidential candidate Leody de Guzman echoed and popularized this call. And now Kamanggagawa party-list representative Elijah San Fernando has succeeded in helping bring about something unprecedented: majority of the members of the lower chamber of the Philippine Congress have expressed support for his and co-sponsors’ bill calling for replacing “provincial rates” with a national minimum wage.

We at Partido Sosyalista welcome this development and express our wholehearted support for this bill.

Though we believe that much more needs to be done to uplift the conditions of workers in the country—and that mere reforms will never suffice to end their slavery under capitalism, we are of the view that legislating a national minimum wage constitutes one of the many preliminary steps needed to loosen the chains fettering workers and, in the longer run, to build their capacity to fight for measures that go beyond loosening their chains.

We recognize that members of the House of Representatives may only be supporting this as a pressure-release valve, to dissipate social anger without fundamentally transforming the structures that produce exploitation. But this is not an acceptable reason to avoid supporting this bill. Workers are not fools: just because elites agree to give them concessions does not necessarily mean that they will automatically be pacified and that they will stop fighting for more.

We stand today at a critical juncture in the long-running struggle between capital and labor in the country. For the first time in decades, the working class actually has a good chance of recovering and fighting back.

We call on everyone, especially fellow progressive forces, to stand on the side of workers by supporting House Bill No. 8081 or the “National Minimum Wage Act” and by coming together to push for the House of Representatives to table it for plenary, for the Senate to also ensure that its equivalent bill also moves forward, and for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to sign it into law.

The passage of a National Minimum Wage Act is both a pragmatic and necessary first step. But a National Minimum Wage must also form part of a broader push: for the abolition of contractualization, for the reduction of work hours, for the expansion of paid leaves, for the continued struggle for a genuinely living wage that reflects the true cost of dignified life, and, ultimately, for the chains that keep workers as modern-day slaves to be broken.#