TUCP CELEBRATES 49TH ANNIVERSARY: NEARLY HALF A CENTURY OF ADVOCACY IN ACTION FOR FILIPINO WORKERS AND THEIR FAMILIES

Our 49 long years of being the country's largest labor center began way back in 1975 when our founder Atty. Democrito “Ka Kito” T. Mendoza realized that for our unions and our federations to best fight for and win job security, higher wages, and decent work—we should be “giving the labor movement, through its collective force, an opportunity to exercise its political power.”

Today, our one big labor family TUCP remains that collective force as the leading voice and force in labor advocacy through tripartism with our very own workers' representatives at the forefront in influencing policy through our TUCP Party-list in Congress that uplifts the lives and livelihood of each and every Filipino worker and their family.

That’s why, amid the many challenges we confronted and conquered for nearly five decades, the TUCP Party-list continues to work for laws for the workers, especially the unorganized, by giving them jobs, justice, and equity.

Next year will be both our 50th Anniversary as well as the 2025 National and Local Midterm Elections: Tuloy ang laban ng TUCP para sa manggagawang Pilipino sa Kongreso!

We are the only workers' party in Congress today who successfully pushed for the passage of the 4Ps Law for those who have less in life, creation of the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) para sa ating mga bagong bayani, Expanded Maternity Leave para sa kababaihan—at marami pa tayong ipapasang batas para sa manggagawa!

For nearly half a century, the TUCP has fought for living wages, security of tenure, and decent work inside and outside of Congress. 

We increased the minimum wage of every region every year. Pero barya-barya hindi sapat! Tuloy ang laban para sa ₱150 across-the-board wage hike ng TUCP!

We passed the Security of Tenure (SOT) bill for the regularization of all permanent temporary & 5-5-5 ENDO workers back in the previous Administration. Na-veto pero hindi tayo susuko! Tuloy ang laban para sa SOT ng TUCP!

We filed bills and resolutions to make decent work a reality for all, lalo na para sa ating informal workers at delivery platform riders.

Dahil sa TUCP, laging una ang manggagawa!

‘Ka Kito’ once said, “If you have the people behind your campaign, believe me, the fight is already won 90%!” Let us make 2025 our golden year by mobilizing our worker-members and leaders in our respective unions and federations.

Because without all of you, there can be no TUCP that can unify Philippine labor, pass labor reforms, and extend medical, financial, employment, and education assistance to Filipino workers and their families.

Tuloy ang laban ng TUCP para sa manggagawang Pilipino sa Kongreso!

Ipanalo ang manggagawa at pamilyang Pilipino!

Mabuhay ang TUCP!

#TUCP  

#TUCP49thANNIVERSARY  

#unaangmanggagawa

PAG-ALAALA SA KABAYANIHAN AT PAGMAMAHAL NI GAT ANDRES BONIFACIO PARA SA BAYAN

Mabuhay ang mga manggagawang Pilipino! Sa diwa ni Andres Bonifacio, ipagpatuloy natin ang laban para sa mas mataas na sahod, ligtas na trabaho, at makatarungang karapatan. 

Sama-sama tayong kumilos para sa mas magandang kinabukasan ng bawat Pilipino.

#TUCP  

#UnaAngManggagawa  

#BonifacioDay

P150 wage hike pushed as TUCP party-list seeks reelection

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines party-list on Tuesday filed its certificate of nomination and acceptance (CONA) for the 2025 midterm elections for its ninth straight year in the House, calling on Congress to pass the P150 legislated wage hike for private sector workers.

TUCP filed its CONA through its legislative officer Carlos Miguel Oñate.

“We are still pushing for P150 across the board wage hike. Bilang co-author ng Trabaho Para sa Bayan law, naninindigan kami sa TUCP na ang bawat Pilipino ay may karapatan sa permanente at disenteng hanapbuhay,” Oñate said.

(We stand by our principle that every Filipino has a right to permanent and decent jobs.)

Other party-list groups who filed their CONA on Tuesday include:

Sagip

Nanay

Arangkada Pilipino

Magsasaka

Agri

1-Pinoy

ARTE, among others

Wage hike

Asked about the biggest hurdle to the passage of the P150 legislated wage hike, Oñate said the cause needs more support to take root.

Bagamat kami po ay kalyado ng Marcos administration, patuloy po yung laban ng TUCP para sa Legislated Wage Act. Sa katunayan, maaaring may isa lamang po kami representante sa Kongreso, ngunit ‘yung co-authors po namin sa Legislated Wage Act, meron lang po kami halos isang daan sa House of Representatives,” Oñate said.

(While we are an ally of the administration,  we will continue to push for legislated wage hike. We only have one representative but the co-authors of the measure are close to 100.) 

“Kung kaya ang panawagan po natin kay Speaker Martin Romualdez at kay Congressman Fidel Nogales na siyang chairman ng House Committee on Labor ay idaos na po iyong pang-apat at huling hearing sa committee para finally i-approve na itong P150 [legislated wage hike] sa House of Representatives,” Oñate added.

(And so we call on Speaker Romualdez and Congressman Nograles who chairs the House Committee on Labor to conduct the final committee hearing to pave the road for the passage of this measure into a law.)

The Senate passed a slightly lower P100 legislated wage hike in May 2023, but it remains stuck at the committee level in the House of Representatives.—LDF, GMA Integrated News

(The Senate already pulled it off. If the Senate can do it, the House of Representatives can certainly do it better.)

- By LLANESCA T. PANTI, GMA Integrated News 

TUCP SLAMS NEDA’S ABSURDLY LOW FOOD POVERTY THRESHOLD AS AN INSULT TO FILIPINO WORKERS: WHAT DECENT MEAL CAN ₱20 BUY? CONGRESS SHOULD ACT NOW AND PASS ₱150 WAGE HIKE!

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) lambasts the National Economic and Development Authority’s (NEDA) outlandish assertion that a Filipino can survive on three meals a day with a mere ₱64. Grilled by senators during the budget briefing of the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) on how the Government classifies food-poor Filipinos, NEDA Secretary-General Arsenio Balisacan responded: “As of 2023, a monthly food threshold for a family of five is ₱9,581, that comes out [to] about ₱64 per person.”

“Is our country’s chief economic planner on another planet to not witness the crippling impact of skyrocketing food inflation, especially rice, and electricity inflation to Filipinos every day? This is a severe insult to Filipino workers who sacrifice their blood, sweat, and tears to do honest hard work but are reduced to a meal worth just ₱20! This is not just offensive—it’s dangerous. It threatens to undermine the much-needed ₱150 across-the-board wage hike proposed by TUCP as the Government and employers abuse these silly statistics to dismiss the survival crisis of the working class—to make ends meet,” stated TUCP Vice President Luis Corral.

The country’s largest labor center TUCP expresses deep indignation that workers are being forced, by their own Government, to endure standards and benchmarks that condemn them to perpetual hunger and a life of eking out a living on scraps. Without the immediate passage of House Bill No. 7871 which seeks to legislate an across-the-board wage recovery increase of ₱150 in the daily wages of private sector workers nationwide, workers can never bring nutritious food to their family’s table, resulting in malnourished children and sick workforce with their productivity and competitiveness dropping like a rock.

“Is this how our economic managers advise our President? Is this how economic planning and wage orders are devised? Really? Are our technocrats really basing their strategy on numbers that have no relation to the real prices of rice, poultry, meat, fish, and vegetables in the public market? Foisting that outrageous food poverty threshold is a grave disservice to the Marcos Administration which vows to reduce poverty to single digit not by statistical gimmickry but by actually improving the quality of lives and livelihood of every Filipino. Our economic managers are badly serving the Filipino people by building a supposedly robust economy on the backs of hungry people and poverty-level wages. Such an unrealistically low food poverty threshold only serves to arm those who oppose our proposed concrete, actionable, and reasonable wage hike, not only undermining the credibility of the Government but derailing our efforts to uplift the lives of our people and uphold their rights which should be the hallmarks of ‘Bagong Pilipinas’,” lamented Corral.

While the food poverty threshold according to NEDA is at least ₱64 per individual per meal, the Ateneo Policy Center estimates that the government-prescribed daily healthy food guide ‘Pinggang Pinoy’ for a family of five would cost ₱693. The National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC) last estimated the family living wage in 2008 at ₱917.

“No wonder, Filipino students are lagging behind international education rankings as they suffer or even die from malnutrition—principally because under the regional wage board system for 35 years of scraps as increases, workers’ wages failed to keep up with the rising cost of living and to fulfill the Constitutional right to a living wage,” explained Corral.

According to UNICEF Philippines, every day, 95 children in the Philippines die from malnutrition, and twenty-seven out of 1,000 Filipino children do not get past their fifth birthday. A third of Filipino children are stunted or short for their age.  In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 survey among 15-year-old students from 79 countries, Filipino students scored lowest in reading and second to lowest in mathematics and science. According to the World Bank, nearly one in three Filipino children under five years of age is stunted primarily due to poverty.

“Congress can no longer afford to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to these absurd official statistics and skewed standards that distort the harsh reality faced by Filipino workers and their families. With high prices and low wages as the most urgent issues plaguing our nation, there is only one course of action: Congress must urgently pass the ₱150 wage hike proposed by TUCP to end the crisis of poverty wages further eroded by surging prices,” emphasized Corral.