THE Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) will challenge a Pasig court order granting a preliminary injunction against the implementation of the new minimum wage increase in Metro Manila.
Labor Secretary Francis N. Tolentino said the department would exhaust available legal remedies to overturn the ruling of Pasig Regional Trial Court Branch 152, which kept NCR Wage Order No. 27 from being enforced while the main case remains pending.
‘We will use all legal remedies to fight and have this decision nullified, and to defend the rights and welfare of our workers,’ Tolentino said in a statement on Friday.
He warned that the continued suspension of the wage increase would deprive more than one million workers in Metro Manila of additional income at a time when household expenses remain high.
‘This decision does not merely stop the wage increase-it takes food away from the tables of more than one million workers in Metro Manila and their families,’ Tolentino said in Filipino.
The preliminary injunction followed a temporary restraining order issued by the same court on July 30 after Readycon Trading and Construction Corp. and R-II Builders Inc. challenged the wage order.
In granting the injunction, the court found ‘serious and urgent questions’ over the wage-setting process that should first be resolved before the order could be implemented.
Among the issues raised was whether the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board-National Capital Region (RTWPB-NCR) sufficiently considered the factors required under Article 124 of the Labor Code, including employers’ capacity to pay.
Court proceedings showed that the wage board did not obtain actual payroll computations, audited financial statements, collective bargaining agreements, operating margins or cash-flow data from employers before determining the adjustment.
Labor groups, however, pushed back against the ruling and joined DOLE in calling for the injunction to be lifted.
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said it would seek the dissolution of the preliminary injunction once the court acts on its motion to intervene in the case.
‘After a temporary restraining order and now a preliminary injunction, workers are once again being forced to shoulder the cost of a judicial intervention that Congress specifically sought to prevent,’ TUCP said.
The group warned that it was prepared to pursue available remedies ‘all the way to the Supreme Court’ if necessary, arguing that the ruling could encourage similar challenges against wage orders in other regions.
TUCP also renewed its call for President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. to certify as urgent a proposed P200 legislated wage increase, saying litigation against the regional wage-setting system has strengthened the case for a nationwide wage hike.
Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Sentro), meanwhile, said the court should not stop workers from receiving an increase that had already been granted.
‘The court has no business stopping workers from receiving a wage increase,’ Sentro Secretary General Josua Mata said.
He also added that while the P60 first tranche was already inadequate to recover workers’ lost purchasing power, withholding it would still hurt families struggling with food, transportation and utility costs.
‘For corporations, a bond is an expense. For workers, withholding even P60 is another blow to their dignity,’ Mata said.