Around 5,000 teachers, government employees and health workers marched to Mendiola last October 4 to demand the Duterte regime to uphold its promise to increase their salaries. Led by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), the teachers mounted a “30K” formation to symbolize their unity in their campaign to increase the entry-level salary of teachers to P30,000.

The All Government Employees Unity said that the regime should implement a significant, and not a meager, wage increase. In addition to the P30,000-salary for entry-level teachers, they also demanded to implement a P16,000-national minimum wage for government employees, and P31,000 for college professors.

ACT also lambasted P61-wage increase for teachers in the proposed 2020 national budget. Currently, there are about 800,000 entry-level teachers who receive a monthly salary of P20,754. Teachers complain that on top of their heavy workload, they also shoulder continuously increasing prices of commodities and cuts in the delivery of basic services.