Press Release
June 2, 2009

Pia warns: 'Gov't nurses, teachers to be shortchanged
by Joint Resolution No.26'

Government nurses and public school teachers are bound to be shortchanged with the pending enactment of Joint Resolution No.26, which seeks to modify the compensation and classification system for all government employees, Senator Pia S. Cayetano warned today.

Cayetano, who represented the Senate minority in the bicameral conference committee that approved the controversial joint resolution Monday, expressed disappointment over the bicameral committee's refusal to heed the clamor of government nurses and teachers groups for better compensation.

"While I laud the objective of this measure to improve compensation for government personnel, it fails to give due regard to the two most undervalued professions in the civil service."

"Instead of honoring an earlier unimplemented law, the Nursing Act of 2002 (RA 9173) that assigned the starting position of all government nurses at Salary Grade (SG) 15, J.R. No.26 now pegs the entry level of nurses to only SG 11 from their current level of SG 10," she pointed out.

"In terms of actual salaries, this means that instead of receiving a starting pay of P25,067 per month at SG 15 under RA 9173, our nurses can only look forward to P18,088 per month under J.R. No.26, which is just a slight improvement from their current starting salary of P12,026 per month. In addition, the proposed hike would even be spread over four years, and so the impact of the increase would likely be negligible and overtaken by the rising cost of living," she explained.

"The non-implementation of the Nursing Act of 2002 itself is already a violation of the Executive Branch of our nurses' right to just compensation. But in approving J.R. No.26, Congress will be vastly reducing the compensation and benefits denied from our government nurses in the last seven years. We are taking back from our nurses what our previous Congress has accorded them. We are effectively violating their right to non-diminution of compensation, a principle that is deeply ingrained in our labor laws," she lamented.

She also said that the clamor for a substantial wage hike of the country's 450,000 public school teachers, who comprise nearly one-third of the total 1.4 million civil servants, was not accommodated in the joint resolution. She noted that the Senate had already approved Senate Bill 2408 in July last year which sought to increase the salary of teachers by P9,000 over the next three years.

"The approved joint resolution, however, only grants a P6,500-pay increase to teachers over the next four years. So not only is the Senate retreating from its earlier stand to grant our teachers a bigger increase over a shorter period, it is also disregarding their long-standing demand for decent wages," she lamented, adding that low pay and limited opportunities have driven many of our nurses and teachers to work abroad.

"Also, by continuously depriving our teachers and nurses of just wages, we are also jeopardizing our Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) where they are the frontliners, and which we are unlikely to achieve, particularly MDG 2 (achieve universal primary education) and MDG 5 (improve maternal health)."

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