Amid the legislated wage hike proposals, a top executive of a giant food and beverage company has suggested that creating more jobs was more feasible for workers to cope with inflationary headwinds rather than raising the minimum wage.

RFM Corporation president and CEO Joey Concepcion on Wednesday said a skilled workforce and a vibrant economy that creates jobs were a more sustainable approach to giving people higher wages, similar to what the House of Representatives and the Senate want to do with their proposed wage hikes of P350 and P100, respectively.

“We all want to improve the lives of our employees, but what is important is for the economy to continue to grow,” Concepcion said, adding that as the economy grows, more jobs will be generated.

With the increased demand, he said, comes higher wages for more people.

“It happens in sectors where we lack workers. An example of this is our nurses — they are paid well because the demand for nurses is high,” he said.

Concepcion, also the chairperson of Go Negosyo, which advocates entrepreneurship, said upskilling and reskilling workers is another long-term solution to raising wages.

“We will help our workers upskill and reskill because this will make Philippine labor competitive with our ASEAN neighbors. A highly skilled workforce that can attract foreign direct investments will boost economic growth, which in turn can spur more jobs and increase wages on a more sustainable basis rather than boosting spending power on the scale and speed being proposed by the legislators,” he said.

Tricky

Concepcion maintained that “using wage increases to spur the economy is a tricky situation.”

“Eventually, smaller companies will not survive, and they will close shop. Rather than having people with jobs, you will have people with no jobs,” he said.

He added that the minimum wage hikes should be left to the regional wage boards.

“The focus is the economy and for us to create more jobs. Let the regional wage boards handle the minimum wage increases,” he said, adding that the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Boards are the ones tasked with reviewing and adjusting the minimum wage in the context of factors like inflation, cost of living, and economic conditions in the respective regions.

However, when significant wage adjustments are deemed necessary beyond the regional level, legislation may be passed by Congress and signed into law by the President.

Concepcion believes there is now industrial peace.

“Over the last few years, we have not seen as many strikes as before. This means employers and employees agree,” he said, adding that some large companies’ CBAs (collective bargaining agreements) even exceed the minimum wages mandated by the government.

“They have to be careful with the P350 wage hike. Nobody in history has done that, which will shake down many companies. Business is not against giving wage increases, but we have to be careful when we do it and how we do it, especially considering that our MSMEs comprise 99 percent of enterprises and generate more than half the jobs, he said. “They cannot afford the wage increase because they are survival entrepreneurs.”