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Marc Jayson Cayabyab - The Philippine Star
June 12, 2025 | 12:00am
Undated photo shows a man counting Philippine Peso bills inside a store in Manila, Philippines.
AFP / File
MANILA, Philippines — The legislated wage hike measure has hit a snag after the Senate and the House of Representatives failed to reach a compromise over their clashing versions of the bill.
The legislated wage hike bill was not among the measures ratified by the Senate during plenary session last night.
Senators yesterday criticized the House’s move to belatedly pass its P200 legislated wage hike bill and not adopt the Senate version for a P100 legislated wage increase, passed as early as last year.
Sen. Joel Villanueva said he wrote to the House labor committee chair to just adopt the Senate version, after a House delegation supposedly expressed its position that it was open to ratifying the Senate version.
But the House panel instead asked for a bicameral conference committee to reconcile their versions, even though yesterday was the last session day of the 19th Congress.
“The Senate is about to adjourn. Definitely, we don’t have time for a bicam. Time is really not on our side,” Villanueva said.
Villanueva suspected the House is “sabotaging” the Senate by pushing for a P200 legislated wage hike to put the Senate’s P100 legislated wage hike in a bad light, even though a higher wage hike is more at risk of getting vetoed.
“We are being pushed to the brink and being made a scapegoat. At the end of the day, this will be at the expense of the workers,” Villanueva said.
Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, under whose Senate presidency the wage hike bill was passed, said he was “disheartened” by the House move.
“The House continuously insists on the P200 minimum wage (increase). We all know that the businessmen, the small and medium enterprises, cannot afford such a large sum. And they insist on that amount when we are (at a) P100 a day per minimum wage earner increase,” Zubiri said.
“So that puts us in a bind. And now it has not moved forward. It is the last day today before we adjourn sine die. We’d like to inform all the workers, laborers, minimum wage earners, that the Senate did its best to fight for their rights. I feel bad for them,” he added.
BSK term extended, poll postponed anew
Meanwhile, the Senate also ratified the bicameral conference report on the bill extending the term of office of barangay officials and resetting the Dec. 1, 2025 elections.
The Senate and House agreed to extend their terms of office of barangay officials to four years with allowable three consecutive terms, and for the Sangguniang Kabataan members to have four years and an allowed single term.
The ratified bill also resets the Dec. 1 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections to the first Monday of November 2026.
The Supreme Court has ruled that prolonged postponement of the BSKE is unconstitutional.
