Tumultuous wage fight seen in 2026

A coalition of major labor federations warned Sunday that the fight for the “long-overdue” P200 across-the-board wage hike will persist beyond 2025, as calls for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to certify the bills as urgent have fallen on deaf ears despite years of relentless clamor.

Lawyer Sonny Matula, president of the Federation of Free Workers and chairperson of the Nagkaisa Labor Coalition, lamented that more than three years into his term, Marcos has never sat down with leaders from the broader labor sector to discuss the legislated wage hike for private workers, fueling concerns about his continued reluctance on the proposed law.

“[T]here should be a dialogue between the President and the trade unions, and that has been our proposal for a long time,” Matula said in Filipino in an interview.

“Three years have passed, and President Marcos still has not met with the broad leadership of the trade unions,” he added.

The previous Congress passed bills seeking a legislated wage hike, but they failed to become law because neither the House nor the Senate was willing to compromise.

The House approved a P200 across-the-board wage hike for all private workers, while the Senate passed a smaller increase of P100.

Neither chamber convened a Bicameral Conference Committee to reconcile the conflicting provisions of the two bills before the 19th Congress ended. As a result, the measure did not reach the president and effectively died with the adjournment of the previous Congress.

Marcos blamed

The Congress-approved measure could have been the first legislatively mandated wage hike in nearly four decades. The last increase was in 1989, when the Wage Rationalization Act (Republic Act 6727) was passed.

Labor groups and advocates blamed Marcos, saying he could have used his power to certify the bill as urgent if he truly intended it to become law.

Matula suspected that Marcos’ alleged inaction could be attributed to resistance from employer groups.