Business groups call for ‘moderated’ salary hike of public school teachers

While recognizing that public school teachers “deserve to be compensated better,” business and professional organizations said Wednesday that a phased and moderated increment—instead of a lump sum increase—must be implemented to prevent an economic turmoil.

The demand for an “immediate” P10,000 increase in public school teachers’ monthly salaries must be thoroughly studied considering many factors including fairness, equity, fiscal affordability and sustainability, among others, the groups said in a joint statement.

The signatories to the joint statement are the Action for Economic Reforms, Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines, Foundation for Economic Freedom, Makati Business Club, Management Association of the Philippines, and Philippine Business for Education.

This proposed sudden spike in salary would further raise the disparity in pay between those employed in public and private schools—a situation that will “fuel migration” of private school teachers to state-run schools and “exert financial pressures on private schools whose tuition fees are regulated by the government,” the business groups said.

The financial requirement of such an increase would cost P150 billion—an amount that is supposedly double the annual budget for the government’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program with 4.3 million household beneficiaries, they noted.

“There is no identified recurring source of funding for this salary increase. As such, it will raise the national government annual fiscal deficit from 3 percent to 4 percent of GDP,” the statement read.

A higher fiscal deficit could lead to higher borrowing cost and lower investments, it added.

Earlier this month, some public school teachers demanded the government to increase their minimum monthly salary from P20,000 to P30,000. 

Education Secretary Leonor Briones has said that the Department of Education was working closely with the administration’s economic team to find measures that would increase the salary of 830,000 teachers.

President Rodrigo Duterte also assured the teachers that the government is working on his promise of raising their pay while defending his decision to prioritize the salary increase of the police and the military.

“They have taken an oath of office, joined an organization inside the government that ... if I tell them to go to Malabang in Lanao del Sur because there’s war—‘Jump straight to hell and die’—they will do that. Go there and fight until you die,” he said.

“That’s why I understand. If you want a strong country, you need to have a strong army. Nothing will happen if you have a weak armed forces. They are weak and you cannot enforce the law," he added. —Dona Magsino/VDS, GMA News