2024 in Review: Philippine workers fight for better wages and social protections

Workers in the Philippines faced various struggles in 2024, from inflation-driven wage demands to the fight for public health insurance.

January 17, 2025 by Judy Ann Miranda
Partido Manggagawa at a rally against inflation in July 2023. (Photo: Partido Manggagawa/ FB)

Last year, workers in the Philippines faced severe challenges in their wages, benefits and working conditions. As political dynasties grow more powerful, organized labor pushes for reforms and better governance

Rising inflation and wage demands

In 2024, the average inflation rate of 3.2% was nearly half that of 2023, yet it still eroded the purchasing power of wages. Relatively higher food prices disproportionately hurt minimum wage earners and informal workers with inflation at 4.3% for the bottom 30% of income households. 

Thus, the demand for another round of minimum wage increases in 2024 became a recurring theme for organized labor. The campaign for a wage hike took a two-pronged approach, with wage bills for a PhP 150 (USD 2.58) increase filed both in parliament and at the regional wage boards (appointed bodies with the mandate to decide on minimum wage increases). 

The Senate vs the House: a political divide on wage hike

In February 2024, the Senate approved a P100 (USD 1.72) increase in the minimum wage. This advance was a result of organized labor successfully leveraging the rift between the upper and lower houses of parliament over recent efforts to amend the Constitution. While the Senate firmly opposed charter change, it instead enacted the salary increase. 

However, that wasn’t the case in the House of Representatives. Despite conducting hearings on pending wage hike bills, the House Labor Committee sat on the proposal and basically killed it. This inaction on the workers’ demand for a wage adjustment stood in sharp contrast to the House’s swift response to other matters, such as parliamentary hearings on the drug war and extra-judicial killings during former President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, as well as investigations into the controversial budgets of the Office of Vice President Sara Duterte and the Department of Education during her tenure.

The regional wage system perpetuates poverty

The year ended without a legislated wage hike, though wage orders were issued for several regions. Despite these orders, minimum wages across all regions—including those that saw increases—remained below the official poverty line. A threshold which has long been criticized for being too low—as the controversy over the official daily food budget revealed.

With the wage boards perpetuating a system of poverty wages, calls for the abolition of the regionalized wage mechanism became popular.

The fight over public health insurance

On another front, organized labor and civil society allies fought a defensive war to keep the funds of Philhealth—the public health insurance system—devoted to improving benefits and services for members, as well as provide care for indigents, in accordance with the Universal Health Care law. It began when President Bong Bong Marcos Jr transferred PhP 60 billion (USD 1.03 billion) of Philhealth’s funds to unprogrammed items in the national budget. In October, the Supreme Court stopped the last tranche of PhP 29.9 billion (USD 0.51 billion). The Nagkaisa (United) labor coalition was an intervenor in the Supreme Court case to oppose the transfer of PhP 90 billion (USD 1.55 billion) of Philhealth funds to the National Treasury.

Another battle erupted in December when the Congressional bicameral conference committee removed the subsidy for Philhealth along with cuts in other social services. The labor coalition Nagkaisa led protests in key cities, including a major rally in the capital, to call for the restoration of the Philhealth subsidy and social services budget. However, President Marcos Jr. ignored the popular clamor and signed the national budget by year end, keeping the much-criticized budget insertions for political patronage funds intact. Among these was PhP 26 billion (USD 0.45 billion) in unprogrammed budget items, criticized as funding for electoral patronage and attributed to House Speaker and presidential cousin Martin Romualdez. As a result, formal and informal workers will now have to rely on politicians for assistance for medical and other emergencies, rather than having health insurance as a right. 

As if on cue, the election commission allowed the distribution of patronage projects even during the midterm elections this year—breaking with the longstanding rule prohibiting the disbursement of public funds during the campaign period, as it is often exploited for vote buying.

Economic and political challenges in the year ahead

The new year greets workers with a higher social security contribution of 5%, which will be deducted from their wages, resulting in lower take-home pay for private sector laborers. To keep the social security system afloat while easing the burden on workers, the government could instead subsidize the employee’s share. However, this is a difficult ask as the Marcos Jr. administration seems to prefer having workers and the poor seek patronage from politicians. This issue is likely to become another plank of organized labor’s demand for quality public services and universal social protection.

Even as demands for higher pay, lower prices, more jobs, and decent work remain very popular issues during the election period, the prospects for positive outcomes for workers are bleak, given that the political dynasties—growing ever more powerful—dominate the landscape. Workers have no allies in either of the two main political dynasties—the Marcoses and the Dutertes—which will be fighting for supremacy in the coming May 2025 polls.

Continuing recent trends, many labor-based groups have been pushed out of the party list system (an innovation in the Constitution to facilitate the election of underrepresented groups, like labor, to the House of Representatives), which has been overtaken by electoral vehicles for politicians who cannot compete in district polls. The party list system has warped into another avenue for members of large dynasties to enter the House of Representatives through the backdoor.

Labor movements and the fight for good governance

Despite the mounting challenges, groups such as Partido Manggagawa (PM) are engaging with local candidates for the establishment of public laundromats and whole day childcare centers to ease the care burdens on employed and unemployed women. In addition to these practical initiatives, PM is also campaigning for the passage of the Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy bill in response to the growing crisis of teenage pregnancy. Amid the barrage of slick TV and Facebook ads of national candidates, PM is conducting information dissemination in working-class communities during the elections, organizing for what it calls “Apat na Dapat” (Four Demands): wage hike, regular jobs, social services and national sovereignty.

Workers will have to endure greater economic difficulties as political infighting intensifies in 2025 and through the remaining years of the Marcos Jr. administration. However, this situation will also drive organized labor to align with public outrage over wanton government corruption and dynastic political control. 

A large multi-sectoral rally scheduled for this month promises to jumpstart a robust movement for good governance, in which workers’ demands are embedded and integral.

Judy Ann Miranda is Secretary General of Partido Manggagawa and a labor feminist.