The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) denounced the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board in Western Visayas (RTWPB-VI) for approving a P40–P45 daily minimum wage increase.
The TUCP described the P5 per hour increase on the daily wage as “insulting” and said it makes a mockery of workers’ struggle to survive the relentless rise in the cost of living.
“Workers cannot be grateful for these crumbs because they should be condemned for what it truly is: a woefully inadequate response to a worsening cost-of-living crisis,” the group said.
“At a time when families are being crushed by rising prices, DOLE has not only failed but has once again slapped the workers of Western Visayas with a P40–45 daily wage hike or roughly P5 insulting increase per hour,” the group added.
The highest minimum wage in Western Visayas will reach only P590 a day, which is P165 below Metro Manila’s P755 and barely 55 percent of the P1,081 living wage estimated by IBON Foundation. DOLE cannot commend itself for granting a wage increase that leaves workers hundreds of pesos short of a living wage, the TUCP said.
Under the new RTWPB-VI Wage Order No. 30, agricultural workers will receive a P45 daily increase, raising their minimum wage from P520 to P565. Non-agricultural workers employed by establishments with more than 10 employees will receive a P40 increase, raising their minimum wage from P550 to P590.
DOLE RTWPB-6 Chairperson Sixto Rodriguez Jr. defended the increase, saying “we have considered inflation [and] peso purchasing power. Of course, we have to respect the capacity of employers to pay. The strong basis for issuing this order is that it represents a job-preserving balance tailored to the specific economic conditions of Western Visayas and Negros.”
Western Visayas recorded the country’s second-highest inflation rate at 9.2 percent in September 2026, while the real value of wages has reportedly eroded by P148.
“How can DOLE then claim to have considered workers’ purchasing power when its own wage order fails to restore what rising prices have taken away? Worse, DOLE keeps invoking employers’ capacity to pay as though workers’ capacity to feed their families, send their children to school, pay rent, cover transportation costs, and keep up with electricity and water bills. Preserving jobs cannot become a convenient justification for preserving poverty wages,” the TUCP also said.
The labor group also pointed out that this is becoming a deeply disturbing pattern, noting that workers outside Metro Manila are repeatedly offered increases hovering around P40 a day, such as P42 in Central Visayas, P45 in CALABARZON, and now P40–P45 in Western Visayas.
Meanwhile, workers in the National Capital Region secured a P60 wage hike rolled back from the earlier P85 increase.
“Workers in the provinces are being told to settle for less even as they face not only the same but more severe punishing increases in the cost of living. The cost of survival does not stop at the borders of the National Capital Region (NCR),” the TUCP added.