Manifesto of Unity

Filipinos Overseas Call for a Family Living Wage in the Philippines – P1,200 Daily Minimum Wage in the Private Sector and P33,000 Monthly Minimum Wage in the Public Sector Nationwide

We, overseas Filipinos, stand united in the call to raise wages from the current daily minimum wage to a Family Living Wage nationwide. This call is spearheaded by Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and the Confederation for Unity, Recognition, and Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE). Both KMU and COURAGE are labor centers advocating for genuine, militant, and patriotic unionism.

A family living wage (FLW) is the income required to meet essential expenses, including food, other basic needs, and savings for social security. However, the gap between current daily minimum wages and the required FLW is a significant issue nationwide. On average, daily minimum wages in the Philippines are just Php440/7.49USD, covering only 36% of the family living wage of Php1,207/20.55USD. In Metro Manila, where the daily minimum wage is the country’s highest at Php645/10.98USD (as of October 2024), there remains a Php562/9.57USD shortfall, covering only 46% of the necessary income to support a family of five.

According to Section 3, Article XIII of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, every worker is entitled to the following rights: security of tenure, humane working conditions, and a living wage. The state's definition of a living wage is the income required by a family to meet expenses for food and other basic needs, including savings, to ensure that every family can live decently.

However, this part of the Constitution is not being upheld by the government itself. Instead, the government is driving workers' wages down to floor levels, which are far too low for families to meet their daily needs.

We are very much concerned with the surging prices of basic commodities – including the cost of utilities, health care, education, housing, and petroleum products, among others – which the current daily minimum wage falls far short of covering. This, coupled with landlessness and the lack of jobs, creates chronic poverty that drives millions of us and our families to work abroad in order to survive. The continuing institutionalization of labor export increases the numbers of victims of human labor trafficking in the country.

This labor export program of the government is not coincidental. To exploit Filipino labor for more profit, the U.S. and Philippine governments have avoided developing national industries and implementation of genuine agrarian reform. They have kept workers’ wages low and without job security to attract more foreign-owned corporations, where our families are forced to toil in. Moreover, the Philippine government – from Marcos Sr. to Marcos Jr. -- have pushed job contractualization, anti-worker policies, union busting, and the persecution of labor and peasant activists and human rights defenders. Thus, we are pushed overseas in the millions, with many of us even becoming the victims of labor trafficking.

The call to increase the FLW will help alleviate poverty in the country. We challenge local big businesses and multinational corporations and oppose any attempts of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines in pushing anti-workers policies in order to ensure a cheap source of labor in the country. They promote state policies of neoliberal globalization such as policies of liberalization, privatization and deregulation advocated by International Monetary Fund & World Bank among countries like the Philippines.

As overseas Filipinos, caregivers, undocumented workers, working youth, and landed immigrants who have strong ties to our home country through our families, and loved ones, we recognize the value and the urgency for a national minimum wage based on the family living wage in the Philippines! Our families should not have to constantly rely on the remittances born from our working two, to three, or even more jobs under exploitative and dangerous conditions. And as workers in our host countries, we are together with our fellow workers at home and abroad including their families in the fight for a just and equitable family living wage.

We, overseas Filipinos, commit and stand united with the workers and the toiling masses in the Philippines in the fight for a family living wage. President Marcos Jr. must address the pressing issues faced by Filipino workers, including low wages, poor working conditions, landlessness and the continued attacks, harassment and red-tagging of those who fight for their rights.

Family Living Wage, Ipaglaban!
Karapatan sa Paggawa, Ipaglaban!
Trabaho sa Pinas, Hindi sa labas!
Isulong ang Laban para sa Pambansang Industriyalisasyon at Tunay na Repormang Agraryo!