Tsinoy businessmen willing to pay higher wages

About 800 Chinese-Filipino businessmen called on the government yesterday to grant an immediate wage hike for workers, despite warnings that this would adversely affect small companies.

Daniel Laogan, spokesman for the Chinese-Filipino Business Club Inc., said their member companies are strongly in favor of increasing minimum monthly wages to enable workers to cope with the rising prices of basic goods.

"We believe that workers should be given additional take-home pay so we are now calling on the different wage boards nationwide to accelerate the process of granting a salary hike," he said.

Laogan said they are not proposing a specific amount to add to the minimum wage, but are calling on wage boards to come up with "fair and reasonable" adjustments based on consultations with concerned sectors.

"We do not have data as to how much increase should be (granted) but we are hoping it would not be too high because it would also trigger other problems," he said.

Laogan added that their group is also hoping that the regional tripartite wage and productivity boards will grant industry and productivity-based salary increases.

Aside from wage hikes, he said their group is also pushing for higher tax exemptions for minimum-wage earners and for the Social Security System to extend immediate loans.

"There are other options to alleviate the financial condition of workers, such as providing loans with zero interest and increasing by P20,000 the current tax exemption for minimum wage earners," Laogan said.

However, the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) is adamantly against the government granting salary hikes at this time.

"We are maintaining our position that giving any salary increase is untimely at this time," ECOP president Rene Soriano said as he called on the government to look for other options to alleviate the financial burden of workers.

Earlier, Soriano warned that requiring employers to provide their workers with additional take-home pay could result in the retrenchment of workers and the closure of many small- and medium-scale enterprises.

"We are not charitable institutions, we operate for profit because if our companies do not profit, we do not have (any) other resort but to reduce (the number of) workers or close shop," he said.

Soriano said the additional cost of labor would also force businesses to increase the prices of their products, which would eventually place a greater financial burden on the public.

He recommended that the government instead focus its efforts on resolving the country’s high unemployment and underemployment rate.

But Laogan said even commercial establishments need to sacrifice by providing their workers additional pay until the country pulls through the prevailing economic crisis.

Meanwhile, Soriano said an entrepreneurial revolution is the best solution to the national economic crisis and the country’s high unemployment rate.

"Our focus is on unleashing or igniting an entrepreneurial revolution despite the difficult environment in the country. Without such an expansion in entrepreneurship, the national economic crisis would only deepen and the enabling environment for business would only worsen," he said.

"Business cannot wait for things to get better before taking the plunge. The time to plunge is now," Soriano added as he encouraged more people to put up businesses and generate employment.

According to Soriano, ECOP members gather for a national conference not to discuss problems facing the business community, but to draft strategies in promoting an entrepreneurial culture and environment.

"Without entrepreneurship, there will be no jobs for our workers, no products or services to speak of, no value-adding business processes, neither growth or progress to dream of," he said.

Soriano lamented that some existing laws drive away investors instead of encouraging job-creating investments.