While the House of Representatives approved the legislated P200 wage increase, to the discomfiture of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP), the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF) and those who want to refurbish the moribund neoliberalism, there is guarantee that it will be passed by the Senate, which is still embroiled on the issue of the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, which is mandatory on the part of the Upper Chamber.
Of course, many of the zealots opposed to the rather puny P200 legislated minimum wage increase are not even employers themselves as they lease warehouses or are still enamored with Friedrich Hayek, whose theory has bombed and is condemned worldwide. Those who fought for the wage increase are workers themselves and they lobbied long and hard to encourage lawmakers to see the reality of wages not keeping up with the inflation rate and the import-based food security policy pursued by economic planners through such mindless laws as the Rice Liberalization Law (RLL.)
On June 2, 2025, workers belonging to the All Workers Unity (AWU) pressed the Lower House to enact bills to provide living wages for all Filipino workers. These bills include the ₱1,200 daily minimum wage for private sector workers, ₱33,000 monthly minimum wage for Salary Grade 1 (SG1) public sector workers, ₱36,000 entry-level wages for BPO workers, and ₱50,000 entry-level salaries for teachers, and nurses and allied health professions. AWU wants to reestablish a national minimum wage that is pegged at living wage standards. AWU is composed of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), COURAGE, Unyon ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA), Piston, KILOS NA Manggagawa, Defend Jobs Philippines, Migrante International, Migrante Philippines, Kadamay, Kilusan ng Manggagawang Kababaihan (KMK), Alliance of Health Workers (AHW), Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and the BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN.)
On June 6, 2025, Workers Rights Watch (WRW) and the Philippines Workers Delegation to the International Labor Conference, also held a press briefing at the University of the Philippines Hotel (UP Hotel) in Diliman, Quezon City to detail continuing cases of labor rights violations, expose previously undocumented cases, and shared more updates from the labor front. WRW comprises the Federation of Free Workers (FFW), KMU), UMA, National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), ACT, KMK, COURAGE, Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK), Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), Migrante Philippines and the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR.)
Malaysian workers are also up in arms against what they insist are exploitative economic policies in the ASEAN that guarantee superprofits for foreign investors, reduced wages for workers and dependence on the US and European markets. On May 26, 2025, Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) chairperson Jeyakumar Devaraj wrote to the Malaysian government to plead for a radical rethinking Kuala Lumpur’s economic direction and demanded that ASEAN member-countries develop its own regional market. The plea was made as the ASEAN held a summit at the Malaysian capital.
Devaraj’s plea was carried by the journal Think Left and Links, the International Journal of Socialist Renewal. He noted that ASEAN countries have witnessed significant economic growth in the past 50 years. In Malaysia, for example, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased 25 times in real terms in the last 5 decades. “But the majority of people in the bottom 80% of the population (B80) in all ASEAN countries are burdened with debt and mired in economic problems. This paradox of economic hardships persisting despite impressive rates of expansion of our respective GDPs, arises from our “export-led growth” pattern of development where we rely on low costs of production (i.e., low wages of between 1/5th to 1/15th of the wages in advanced countries) to produce for the markets of Western countries and Japan,” he argued.
The PSM leader said competition among ASEAN countries for foreign direct investment (FDI) has led to a progressive reduction of corporate tax rates. In Malaysia, corporate tax has decreased from 40% of corporate profits in 1988 to the current 24%, leading to a contraction in the ratio of government income to GDP. For Malaysia this ratio has decreased from 30% in the 1980s to only 15% last year. This reduction in government revenue has severely restricted the government’s ability to strengthen the social safety net for our people. “For the past 5 decades, countries in ASEAN have followed the advice of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to rely on FDIs to drive the construction of manufacturing industries and rely on the markets of rich countries in Europe and North America for goods created by factories in ASEAN,” Devaraj explained.
Devaraj argued this development model cannot continue forever inasmuch as the West only represents 12% of the global population. It is impossible for them to generate enough gross demand for all countries in the world. The rate of GDP growth in Western countries is low because of the relocation of their factories to Asian countries, where manufacturing costs are kept much lower. The de-industrialization of Western countries in the past 40 years has led to the loss of high-paying factory jobs and their replacement d by precarious jobs in the service sector with low and unstable incomes. If the internal market in the ASEAN region, which has 690 million people can be developed, it will increase demand for goods and services, open more opportunities for investments, generate new jobs, raise tax collection and reduce dependence on the US and EU. The issues raised by Devaraj hew closely to the issue being raised by Filipino workers, and there is no guarantee that the Senate, as well as the penny-pinching Malacanang, will agree to any wage hike for the simple reason that the plutocrats are viscerally against it. (DIEGO MORRA)
