LAST month, Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto 3rd attempted to resurrect the “14th month pay” bill, which would compel non-government employers to pay their non-managerial workers an additional month’s pay on top of their regular wages and the long-established, end-of-the-year “13th month pay” bonus. Another glaring flaw of the Unabia proposal is that it is unrealistically broad in scope. According to 2016 data from the government—which Unabia dutifully recites in his introduction to the bill—99.57 percent of the Philippines’ 900,000 business establishments are classified as MSMEs. Not recognizing that the actual product is the most important ingredient to prosperity is a blind spot Unabia’s counterpart Tito Sotto also has with his ridiculous “14th month pay” bill. There is no business case for paying 14 months of wages for 12 months of productive output.

Source: Manila Times September 12, 2018 16:30 UTC