A labor group slammed Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez over the country’s wage rates that it describes as so small and inadequate for workers to cope with the extraordinary inflation.

The workers group the Associated Labor Unions (ALU) said workers need significant increase in the light of the extraordinary inflation which it attributed to what it called ‘ínutile leadership’ of the trade secretary to arrest profiteers.

ALU spokesperson Alan Tanjusay alleged that the Lopez leadership failed to control the prices of commodities which became all the more hurting because of the inflation as a result of excise tax on fuel by the TRAIN law, oil price increase in the world market and the depreciation of Philippine peso.

ALU stressed that the workers need a significant and an across-the-board wage increase to cope with surging prices of goods and commodities and avert poverty that breeds low productivity, often leading desperate people to resort to illegal drugs use and trafficking and other crimes.

He said the highest monthly gross salary for minimum waged workers, for example, is P12,300, way below the government standard of P42,000 set by the NEDA.

Tanjusay said if employers will not raise their employees’ pay, workers and their families will become more impoverished and vulnerable to other unlawful and immoral means to survive– with hunger encouraging more social upheaval, chaos and anarchy.

On one hand, a significant wage increase to workers will not disadvantage the unemployed and poorer because the wage increase money will not be stored in a bank.

Instead, the extra money would be spent right away to purchase basic commodities, pay loans, pay for siblings’ matriculation, and remitted to parents in rural provinces benefitting businesses and job opportunities in the process.

Tanjusay noted Lopez has forgotten that he is a public official working in government paid by workers’ blood money to ensure welfare of the people and protect not just the interest of business owners and employers.