Editorial:
Raise wages!

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

It is correct to call for an increase in workers' wages and government employees' salaries. It is a demand that has become ever more urgent in the face of the intensifying oppression and hardships imposed by the US-Arroyo regime. It is a call that begs no further elaboration especially among workers who struggle on a daily basis to support their families amid extreme poverty. On the first of May, it is but fitting for this demand to reverberate nationwide along with the cry to oust the reactionary regime.

However way the government tries to doctor the statistics, it cannot deny the burning need for a wage increase. Long before the regime admitted that the inflation rate in March doubled compared to last year's, the people have already been suffering from the spiraling cost of basic goods and services. And no matter how much the regime's most rabid minions alter the definition of unemployment, they cannot hide the burgeoning ranks of the jobless, which include those newly graduated from college.

Only a P125 hike in the current P250 minimum daily wage can provide immediate relief to millions of worker families. Before the advent of new taxes and the weekly oil price hikes, a family of six already needed over P500 a day to live decently.

The regime openly mocks the workers' struggle not only by its continued rejection of a wage increase but by allowing incessant increases in the prices of basic goods and services. The workers are raging in anger at the Arroyo regime for insisting on the approval of additional taxes before a wage hike could even be considered. The reactionary government and the monopoly corporations can't even wait to seize anew money that the workers haven't even laid their hands on yet!

The regime also claims that the only sufficient basis for raising wages is an increase in public transportation fares. It dangles a possible fare hike to destroy the unity of the transportation sector with the broad masses of the people, including the workers, against the Oil Deregulation Law and other laws and policies that have wrought suffering on the people. Through this, the Arroyo regime hopes that the workers would turn a blind eye to the oil companies' arbitrary increases in the prices of petroleum products.

It is but fitting to demonstrate to the regime the actual strength of the workers and people's organized action to put a stop to the scorn it heaps on the struggle for a wage increase.

21 April 2005
English Edition

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