SEN. Ralph Recto has urged the national government to grant a P1,000 across-the-board increase in the monthly pay of 1.1 million employees in its payroll, “from the President down to the lowly janitor,” instead of increasing the basic pay of each by a certain percentage.

Recto made the proposal following the inclusion of a P13.1 billion pay hike package for state workers in the P1.053 trillion 2006 budget bill.

Details of the salary increase have yet to be announced by Budget officials, but a line in President Arroyo’s “Budget Message” to Congress hinted of an increase equivalent to eight percent of an employee’s basic pay.

While Recto welcomed the move to adjust the “inflation-eroded pay” of government workers, he urged Malacanang to consider a fairer way of doing it, by granting instead a uniform P1,000 increase in the monthly pay of government workers regardless of their position and salary.

“In contrast, pegging the increase to a certain percentage of the basic pay may widen gaps in the public sector pay scale because the bigger the salary, the bigger the corresponding increase,” he said.

Using this approach, a Cabinet member who receives a monthly basic pay of P40,425 will get P4,042 more a month, based on a 10 percent increase, while a public school teacher, whose monthly basic pay is P9,939, will only get P993 more.

An across-the-board approach, on the other hand, would mean that the President, who receives P57,750 a month in basic salary will get the same increase in pay as those in “the bottom of the compensation totem pole, the 23,677 utility workers in the government which make do with P5,082 a month,” Recto said.

“While HR experts would argue that the bigger the responsibility, the bigger should the increase in pay be, I think the times call for the adoption of the principle that one rising tide must raise all ships,” he said.

Recto has authored a bill granting a P2, 000 across-the-board monthly increase in government salaries. Approval of the P1, 000 monthly pay hike is “tantamount to a 50 percent down payment on this,” he said.

The last time the Salary Standardization Law was amended was in 2001.

At present, 1,108,856 employees cram the bureaucracy, 456,317 of whom are teachers and 279,149 are in the uniformed services.