14th month pay bill not getting support from businesses
Employers and business owners in the Philippines have expressed their opposition to Senate President Vicente Sotto III’s proposed 14th month pay bill. The Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECoP) said that the country’s lawmakers need to focus on skills training and other productivity-focused measures instead of granting workers an extra month’s pay. The proposed bill will compel non-government employers to pay their non-managerial workers an additional month’s pay on top of their regular wages and the long-established, end-of-the-year 13th month pay bonus. ECoP maintains that the long-term solution to improve workers pay is to first boost productivity by focusing on the workers’ skills, training, and education: there is no business case for paying 14 months of wages for 12 months of current productive output.
