Manila to set minimum wage
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Estimated 2m domestic helpers' salaries will be periodically reviewed
Long overlooked as part of the workforce, the Philippines’ estimated two million domestic helpers will get a minimum wage that will be periodically reviewed and other benefits after a 16-year legislative slog to get the measures through Congress.
The minimum wage, which ranges from the equivalent of S$75 (Bt1,870) a month in Manila to S$45 in the provinces, is hardly bountiful. But groups lobbying for better working conditions for the country’s kasambahay (house mate) say it will provide a basis for further wage adjustments and, for the first time, legally binding benefits.
A congressional committee last week approved a unified version of kasambahay Bills passed in both chambers of Congress.
It is now ready to be signed into law by President Benigno Aquino III, who made getting the measures passed a priority of his legislative agenda. The first version of the Bill was filed in 1996 and attracted little interest among lawmakers.
Senator Jinggoy Estrada, who lobbied hard to get the legislation passed, said signing it into law before the end of the year would be a “perfect Christmas present to our hardworking helpers”.
Under the measures, domestic helpers get a full day off every week, 13th month pay, and employer contributions to state health care, social security and housing schemes.
“I have heard about this and it’s welcome,” said Edith Abok, 40, who has worked for the same employer in Manila’s Makati district for 15 years.
The new deal, however, is probably not widely known among the majority of beneficiaries, as the long campaign to get better working conditions for them has not been widely followed in the local media.
“The government needs to launch an awareness campaign about the measures for employers and domestic workers,” said Lilibeth Masamloc, president of Sumapi, an association of domestic helpers, and a former domestic helper herself. “The challenge now is to get employers to meet their obligations.”
While some 1.3 million Filipinos work abroad as domestic helpers, according to recent government data reported in the local media, the kasambahay are a largely invisible part of the domestic workforce despite their numbers.
Home help in the Philippines is certainly not a preserve of the better-off. Most middle-class households – those with monthly income of above 20,000 pesos (Bt15,000) – employ domestics.
Surveys by Sumapi suggest that the average pay of a live-in domestic helper in Manila is already slightly above what will become the minimum wage. It is not nearly enough to run a household and, not surprisingly, many kasambahay are single.
But Masamloc points out that setting a mandatory minimum is important, because the country’s wage boards will now conduct periodic reviews for possible adjustments in the minimum wages of the kasambahay.
Estrada told reporters the bicameral committee considered the incomes of middle-class households in setting the minimum wage.
“We are not preventing well- off employers from paying much higher wages to their household helpers. We just want to give the kasambahay what is due them,” he said.
