Business groups in Negros Occidental yesterday called on the Western Visayas Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board to put a stop to granting mandated daily wage increases, and instead proposed pay hikes based on productivity standards set forth by a tripartite body for each economic subsector or industry.

The call is contained in a position paper issued by the Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Bacolod Filipino Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chamber of Real Estate and Builders Association-Negros Occidental Chapter, and Subdivision and Housing Developers Association-Negros Chapter, representing hundreds of micro, small, and medium enterprises in the service, trading, and light industrial manufacturing sectors.

It was made in reaction to a petition from the General Alliance of Workers Association and the New Independent Workers Association for a P72 to P85 wage increase across the board, citing increases in the cost of living as their main argument, in order to survive.

The present method of asking for an across-the-board wage increases is now outmoded, counterproductive and not beneficial to both labor and management by virtue of the free trade agreements that our government has signed and entered into with other countries in the global free market arena effective Jan. 1, 2015, the position paper said.

Gone are the days when trade organizations could simply go to the bargaining table and ask for wage increases without tying it to production because the operative word in a regime of free trade is productivity/profitability in order for businesses and trade unions to prosper and compete, and not merely to survive, it also said.

The business groups are calling on the RTWPB to instead commission studies and convene an assembly where the productivity standards must first be discussed by labor, management and government, before any appropriate monetary as well as non-monetary benefits can be established.

They said the industries vital to economic development of Negros Occidental with the advent of ASEAN Free Trade Area agreement are sugar, other agricultural crops, livestock and poultry products, aquaculture and fishery products, ICT/BPO, and power energy.

These various industries require different value chain activities where the nature, character and size of the labor inputs are totally different and unique, they said. An across the board wage increase for these industries in a free trade environment without first establishing productivity standards for each subsector could spell the difference between business thriving vis-à-vis business closures which could result to undesirable unemployment level, they pointed out.

They said the Philippines has the highest unemployment rates among ASEAN countries based on an ILO report published in 2014. According to an SWS survey, the latest unemployment rate in the last quarter of 2014 rose to 27 percent which accounted for 12.4 million unemployed Filipinos as of December 31, 2014, the business groups added.

They also said some of their members in the construction, light industrial manufacturing and real estate development are putting on hold expansion projects and have adopted the wait and see attitude because of AFTA. They do not have productivity standards as well, the position paper said..

The business groups said that before any new wage increase are approved by the RTWPB, productivity standards must be determined by meeting with stakeholders in the sugar, agricultural crops, livestock and poultry, and aquaculture and fisheries sectors within the second and third quarters of this year.

Monetary and non-monetary benefits must then be formulated based on the productivity standards established by the various stakeholders for each of the economic subsectors, the position paper said.

Further training should also be conducted for displaced rural agricultural workers and their children to improve or enhance their skills in order to increase their productivity so they can find jobs in other sectors, its added.

The position paper was signed by Frank Carbon and George Zulueta for MBCCI, Alfredo Barcelona for the BFCCCI, Eduardo Suatengco Jr. for CREBA-Negros Occidental Chapter and Kenneth Tirthdas for SHDA-Negros Chapter.*CPG

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