As 2024 comes to a close, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), the country’s largest labor center, and the TUCP Party-list, the only worker’s party in Congress, calls for the relentless escalation of our collective fight for a living wage, quality jobs, and decent lives. In 2025, Filipino workers deserve better.
We cannot help but rue that while 2024 was a very good and highly profitable one for a select few, for the majority of our workers and their families – it has been one of continuing hardships and uphill struggle.
Forbes reported that the collective wealth of the Philippines’ 50 richest reached USD 80.8 billion in the first quarter of 2024, and it continues to grow as they accumulate more and more wealth.
In contrast, a majority of ordinary working Filipinos continue to grapple with the relentless rise in rice prices and skyrocketing electricity prices eating away at their meager salaries.
Our problems are compounded by the Ukraine-Russia war, uncontrolled rampant smuggling, and price manipulation of rice, sugar, pork, and most other food items. The infamous daily “carmageddon” traffic in Metro Manila, now ranked the worst in the world, adds hours of daily agony to workers’ lives. Gas and diesel prices also continue their relentless ascent, further draining household budgets.
It is little wonder then that over half of our people consider themselves poor. Even worse, the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) found that one in three of our children suffer from stunted physical and mental growth.
These are damning indictments of an economy that has been exceptionally beneficial to a chosen few at the expense of hardworking Filipinos left in poverty and despair.
For TUCP and our workers, this is a call to arms: to relentlessly escalate our fight for living wages, quality jobs, and decent lives for our families, especially for our children ravaged by chronic malnutrition and stunted physical and mental growth. They, the majority of Filipinos, deserve much better—certainly more than charity but lives of dignity.
In 2024, we fought tooth and nail in Congress for the ₱150 legislated wage hike bill instead of the token scraps from the regional wage boards, ensuring workers earn enough to cope with rising prices and meet their basic needs. At home and abroad, we actively engaged in social dialogue with employer and government partners, pressing for freedom of association reforms to transform the Philippines from one of the worst countries for workers for nearly a decade into a model of worker-centered trade and economy so that workers in farms, assembly lines, offices, delivery services, domestic and overseas vessels, food service facilities, in the fishing industry, in service and retail centers and small-scale mining communities can organize unions free from fear and harassment. That is only right to transform the Philippines into a country that truly and really puts a premium on workers’ rights and welfare as the core of economic development.
The TUCP, as co-author of the Trabaho Para sa Bayan Act, pitched our TUCP Jobs Agenda, centered on building a national railway system connecting regional and provincial agro-industrial hubs, as a decent employment creation masterplan to ensure food security and secure inclusive prosperity.
Yet, the latest Pulse Asia survey conducted from 26 November to 03 December 2024 sends a clear and urgent message: the Government should do more in addressing the most pressing issues for Filipino working families namely job creation, wage increases, hunger, and poverty reduction. The 2% approval rating on the government’s approach to managing inflation highlights the damage to ordinary Filipino lives done by soaring prices on the insufficient wages of workers.
That is why as we step into 2025, we renew our resolve to finally address these most pressing issues and restore our people’s trust—TULOY ANG LABAN NG TUCP!
TAASAN ANG SWELDO! The TUCP will continue the fight for the across-the-board ₱150 legislated wage hike in the House of Representatives as an urgent priority and non-negotiable measure, calling on lawmakers to end the epic failed experiment of regional wage boards. This is imperative particularly for our over four million minimum wage earners who are almost all “near-poor” or worst, “poor” as minimum wages across regions still fall below the poverty threshold as they can barely satisfy their most basic needs as they make hard choices on expenditures for food, rent, and utilities, especially amid major family emergencies, crises, and illness.
WAKASAN ANG ENDO! PUTULIN ANG TANIKALA NG PAGSASAMANTALA SA MGA MANGGAGAWA SA PRIBADO AT PAMPUBLIKONG SEKTOR. The TUCP remains adamant in urging the Marcos Administration to pass the Security of Tenure (SOT) bill as the only solution to end the weaponization of fixed-term contracts to evade employer obligations, avoid payment of right wages and benefits, evade occupational safety and health obligations, and to solve cyclical unemployment which has created a permanent class of poor people. We want regular jobs, not mere “Ber Months” jobs amid double-digit underemployment since before the pandemic.
The Government should lead the way by passing the TUCP bill on civil service equivalency providing for automatic civil service eligibility and plantilla position for all our government contractuals and casuals, numbering nearly a million, who have served at least 3 years.
IPAGLABAN ANG DISENTENG TRABAHO! The TUCP urges the Government not only to formulate but implement decent job creation plans anchored on compliance with core labor standards. DAPAT SAPAT NA SAHOD AT BENEPISYO, LIGTAS AT MAY KASIGURUHAN SA TRABAHO, AT MAY PAGPAPAHALAGA SA MGA KABATAAN, KABABAIHAN, MGA MAY KAPANSANAN, AT MGA SENIOR CITIZENS. We push for a fully funded and genuinely tripartite Just Transition Program for the creation of sustainable green jobs and high-value digital jobs. Every Filipino deserves decent work—not entry-level starvation wages, precarious slave-like contractual setups, death trap workplaces, and exploitative gig, freelancing, and platform work.
This is not only our Christmas wish nor our New Year’s resolution—it is our enduring mission. DAHIL SA TUCP, LAGING UNA ANG MANGGAGAWA!
As we welcome 2025, an election year, we issue a clarion call and challenge to all aspiring public servants: make your stand clear and unequivocal—put workers first. Every working family will ask every candidate: TATAASAN MO BA ANG SWELDO? WAWAKASAN MO BA ANG ENDO? IPAGLALABAN MO BA NG DISENTENG TRABAHO?
No excuses. No empty promises. No ifs, no buts.
The Filipino people demand and deserve no less than leaders who will fight for the workers who are our nation’s backbone.
Manigong Bagong Taon mula sa TUCP at Mabuhay ang Manggagawang Pilipino!
