One in 5 firms violate minimum wage law

One in five firms violate the minimum wage law, Sen. Ralph Recto said last week.

Last year, 18 per cent, or 2,921 of the 16,319 firms visited by the Department of Labor and Employment were found to have violated the minimum wage law, slightly higher than 2003’s 16 per cent.

Recto called on the labor department to aggressively monitor the observance of wage laws, stressing the equal importance of hiking the minimum wage and making sure that it is properly implemented.

"What use is the minimum wage law if, like traffic laws, it is violated with impunity?" he said. Bulatlat

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Sue oil firms for overpricing - IBON

Following Department of Energy Undersecretary Peter Abaya's admission that oil companies have already "over-recovered" P 0.47 per liter for diesel, IBON Foundation urged the government to press charges against these oil firms.

Ibon, an independent research institution, last week estimated that oil firms overpriced petroleum products by P3.97 per liter in 2004.

Based on the 52 million liters per day actual sales for the first nine months of 2004, oil firms may have raked in P6.2 billion on top of their regular income, the foundation added.

Ibon also urged a price roll back, which, it said, should also recover overpricings reported in the past. Bulatlat

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Consumers urge GMA to reduce inflation to 3%

Kontra Kulim-VAT spokesperson Lina Monsod dared President Macapagal-Arroyo’s economic team to cut down inflation instead of pushing for another Value-added Tax hike.

“The people, especially the poor, can only take so much. And we very well know
what they are capable of doing,” she said.

Monsod said the country is now hitting eight to nine per cent inflation, way up the usual three per cent. Bulatlat

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Standby tax power for President is unconstitutional - Bayan

The proposed standby taxing authority that would grant President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the power to raise Value-Added Tax is “unconstitutional, treacherous and an insult to Filipino taxpayers’ collective intellect,” the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Patriotic Alliance) said last week.

“This would allow Mrs. Arroyo to raise the VAT rate from 10 percent to 12 percent should collections from the compromise VAT law fail to reach P60 billion, or if the CPSD (Consolidated Public Sector Deficit) exceeds 1% of Gross Domestic Product,” Bayan Secretary-General Renato Reyes Jr. said.

But “CPSD has always exceeded 1 per cent of GDP. Who are they fooling?” Reyes added.

In the Philippines, taxation powers are only vested in the legislature. Bulatlat

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