BACOLOD City – General Alliance of Workers Association secretary-general Wennie Sancho said the economic aftershock of the COVID-19 pandemic led to an extreme drop in the real wages of private sector workers in Western Visayas.
Sancho said that the latest Regional Economic Profile issued by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that as of August 2020, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), or changes in the price level of goods and services that most people buy, is at 125.7%, higher than 121.7% in 2019.
The inflation rate, which is the percentage change in CPI, is at 2.7, also higher than 2.4 last year.
The same data also showed that the nominal wage or wage measured in the amount of money, which is currently P395 per day for commercial/industrial workers, was drastically reduced to P314.24 in terms of real wage, which is the actual purchasing power of the peso.
The decrease is P80.78 per day or P2,100 per month, Sancho said.
The purchasing power of the peso (PPP) is the equivalent value of goods and services that a peso could buy at current prices.
Sancho also said that continuous decline in the real value of minimum wage would impact on the loss/erosion of the workers’ purchasing power.
He further said that a lower value on the workers’ purchasing power denotes a diminished capacity of workers to have access to basic goods and services.
“This diminution of wages is detrimental to the economic survival of the workers and their families in the midst of pandemic,” Sancho said.
He pointed out that to protect the purchasing power of the workers, the government should control inflation rather than reducing the already low standard of living afforded by the minimum wage.
“A 10% erosion on the value of the purchasing power of the nominal wage can be used as a warning signal to the Regional Wage Board to review whether the prevailing minimum wage still serves its purpose of protecting the vulnerable workers from the vagaries of the market,” he said.
