MANILA, Philippines – On Sunday, we mark the 108th anniversary of Labor Day in the Philippines, one of the most well-observed holidays internationally that marks the long struggle for workers’ rights.

Labor Day originated in the United States at the height of the Industrial Revolution when the average worker rendered 12 hours of work seven days a week. Even children and the elderly toiled, often in unsafe environments.

As manufacturing jobs in industrial centers grew, labor unions also strengthened. On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers held the first Labor Day parade in Union Square in New York City. They called for better working conditions and rights for laborers, including the eight-hour workday which we now enjoy.

The struggle was fraught with difficulties, even deaths among the ranks of the workingmen. Anyone who joined the Labor Day movement did so at the expense of his day’s wage. It was not until 1894 that federal legislation made it a legal holiday, enabling workers to celebrate it freely.

Here in the Philippines, the first Labor Day happened on May 1, 1903, when the Union Obrera Democratica de Filipinas led 100,000 workers in a demonstration in front of Malacañang. Their rally echoed the calls for worker rights in the United States and the rest of the world.

Today, as in then, Labor Day embodies the fight not just for survival but for decent living for all. At the most basic level, this encompasses adequate food, shelter, clothing, and education.

In 2009, a Filipino family of five needed P160 daily to meet their food requirements and P231 to stay out of poverty. These were based on the 2009 Official Poverty Statistics released by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB).

The NSCB also estimated the daily food and poverty threshold for 2011 based on the January-February 2011 consumer price index, which amounted to P170 and P246, respectively.

In the National Capital Region, the minimum wage for non-agriculture jobs is set at P404 and for agriculture jobs at P367. Outside Metro Manila, minimum wages are much lower, not exceeding P300 for non-agriculture jobs in most of the regions.

It is widely debated how accurate to real needs these approximations are, but one thing is certain: life is becoming increasingly difficult for many as the prices of food and oil continue to surge.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is the latest institution to confirm this, after the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In a new report released last week, ADB said that domestic food inflation in Asia averaged 10 percent in the early part of the year. This has dire implications because a 10 percent rise in domestic food prices could force 64 million people into extreme poverty using  $1.25 a day threshold.

The NSCB noted that the prices of fuel and transportation have gone up by 25.2 percent and 11.5 percent between 2009 and 2010. However, minimum wage income did not keep pace – it increased only by 5.8 percent in NCR which was the highest nationally – and even remained unchanged in some regions.

In the near term, it is important for the government to provide social safety nets to help cushion the adverse impacts of the crisis on the most vulnerable in the population. However, a more sustainable long-term response is needed to address the root causes of these problems. Food insecurity can be traced to a history of underinvestment in agriculture and the technology that would improve food production by leaps and bounds. Our dependence on imported crude is rooted in our inability to fully maximize an abundance of renewable sources of energy.

More than making nominal adjustments to wages, we must ensure that Filipinos’ hard-earned income is not used up in weathering interim shocks but instead is better spent in improving the general welfare of their family through responsive – not reactive – policymaking.

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