TUCP asks Marcos to push for nationwide P200 wage hike

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) on Tuesday appealed to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to bat for the immediate passage of a P200 legislated nationwide wage hike.

In a statement on Tuesday, TUCP encouraged national unity in its call for the government to help Filipinos who are in a "kapit sa patalim" (clinging to a knife) situation often overshadowed by ongoing political tension.

On behalf of the country’s workers, the group asked President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to call for a P200 legislated wage hike as an urgent priority measure and be enacted as a law before the closing of the 19th Congress.

This is in response to the President’s Executive Order No. 84, which raised the daily subsistence allowance of military personnel by P200 for being “no longer adequate to meet the daily sustenance of an active-duty soldier.”

TUCP pointed out a recent Stratbase-Social Weather Stations national survey from March 2025 that stated 27.2% Filipinos experience involuntary hunger, the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Emotions fanned by social media are running high, but sadly, it has not been about the dire situation of Filipino workers and their families —their desperation for a take-home pay that affords them three (3) nutritious meals on the table, which addresses the increasing stunting of our children, and which can ensure that our future workforce will be competitive in the ASEAN. Has the political climate made our society too jaded to poverty and the daily sufferings of our people that all political players have diverted their attention to political wranglings?,” asked the TUCP.

The group added, “It has always been ordinary Filipinos—workers and their families—who have been the unwitting collateral damage caught in the political crossfires of competing ambitions. Desperate for action instead of distraction, Filipino working families are calling on our public servants—both sitting and aspiring—to focus on what truly matters to us: a ?200 wage hike to survive!”.

According to the TUCP, over five million minimum wage earners nationwide are trapped in poverty wages where they are overworked and underpaid, while regional wage adjustments were just “nothing but crumbs” that do not reach the workers themselves.

It added that “instead of the urgent wage hike that workers desperately need, all we see is chaotic political wrangling that defeats optimism and crushes hope, if there’s any left at all. What remains is growing public frustration—frustration that demands the abolition of the failed regional wage board system and a call for Congress to finally take over and pass the ?200 legislated wage hike into law.” —Jiselle Anne Casucian/RF, GMA Integrated News