KORONADAL CITY -- Not a single group from Central Mindanao region has filed a petition for salary increase a day before the one-year prescriptive period lapses on Tuesday, a labor official said.

Minimum wage rate for workers in the non-agriculture sector stands at P245 per day and in the agriculture sector, P225 for plantation and P220 for non-plantation workers.

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Such wage rates were approved on June 16, 2008, and under Labor laws groups could file for salary adjustment one year after.

However, groups could still file for a wage adjustment petition even without the one-year expiration if there are supervening conditions, such as what happened last year when prices of basic commodities hit the roof.

Prices of rice breached the P50 per kilo mark and fuel P60 per liter around this time last year in certain parts of Mindanao.

"As of June 15, there's still no petition for salary adjustment," Joel M. Gonzales, regional assistant Labor director, confirmed, noting the region has not been spared by the global economic crisis.

The financial crunch dampened as much as 40 companies in Central Mindanao, which have resorted to either retrenchment of workers or the compressed-work week schedule, said Gonzales, also the secretary of the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPB).

But despite the economic slowdown affecting the companies in the area, he told BusinessWorld that the wage board would accommodate any petitions coming from legitimate labor groups in the area.

There's no deadline for filing a salary adjustment petition after the one-year period lapses, with the wage board willing to wait for any petitioners, Gonzales said.

Meanwhile, Carlito Y. Uy, president of the South Cotabato Chamber of Commerce and Industry Foundation Inc., said this period is "not the best time" for workers to ask for salary increases.

"Companies are scaling down their operations and their work force due to the global economic turmoil and any salary increases would further burden affected industries," he said in a separate interview.

"I also think there will be no salary increases for the private sector this year with the statement of President [Gloria Macapagal] Arroyo opposing wage adjustments with the current economic crisis," Uy added.

The absence of salary increase petition before the wage board, according to him, shows that the workers in the area "understand the situation."

Efforts to reach local leaders of the militant Kilusang Mayo Uno for comments proved futile.

Uy said the local business sector or employers' groups would officially issue a position once labor groups lob their salary increase petition before the regional wage board. (BSS)