Workers from his sugarcane plantation in Isabela, Negros Occidental have accused Arroyo of non-payment of the mandated minimum wage and other benefits for the past three years.
In a complaint filed with the Department of Labor and Employment’s Western Visayas office, 24 sugarcane workers claimed that the First Gentleman failed to provide them salaries and holiday pay based on minimum wage orders.
"At least for the last three years, Mike Arroyo has stripped us of our right wages," Ricardo Gargantiel, leader of the workers employed in the 157-hectare Hacienda Bacan.
Gargantiel said Hacienda Bacan is classified as a "plantation sugar enterprise," thus its 68 farm workers are entitled to receive a daily minimum wage of P180 based on the latest regional wage order issued last June.
The previous regional wage order issued in August 2004 mandated that workers in agriculture areas of more than 24 hectares and which employ at least 20 workers should get a daily minimum wage of P120.
But for the last three years, the workers claimed that majority of them have been getting only an average weekly pay of P525 for the first three months of the sugar milling season and P425 weekly for the next three months.
"We only have a salary for six months so if you compute it, our annual salary is only P11,400, which means that most of us are getting P31 a day," Gangantiel said.