The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) has been following the negotiations for a Collective Bargaining Agreement between the University of Santo Tomas (UST) administration and the university’s faculty union. The UST Faculty Union’s (USTFU) demands for a wage hike and medical assistance, the most contentious issues in the negotiations, deserve the UST administration’s prompt and adequate response.

Data shows that yearly tuition fee increases in the university have not meant a corresponding increase in the salaries of faculty members. Despite yearly tuition increases since 2021, faculty members’ salaries have remained stagnant since that year.

On top of the university’s billions of funds, the UST management was able to collect the following amount from tuition fees: P129 million in 2020-2021, P103 million in 2021-2022, P128 million in 2022-2023, and P214 million in 2023-2024. While it claims that it follows the legal mandate of allotting 70% of tuition fee increases to faculty salary, faculty members have not had a raise since 2021.

In ongoing CBA negotiations, the USTFU is demanding P26 million worth of salary, but the UST administration is offering only P17 million. The USTFU is also demanding P25 million worth of medical assistance over a period of five years, while the UST management is offering a mere P15 million. The faculty union is demanding that its demands be sourced from the university’s earnings, not from students’ tuition fees, which is what the UST administration wants.

Due to the UST administration’s intransigence, the USTFU is planning to declare a CBA deadlock on March 14 and to file a notice of strike before the Department of Labor and Employment’s National Conciliation and Mediation Board on March 17. In the union’s March 10-11 vote, 680 out of 1,193 members or 57% rejected the administration offer, and only 400 educators or 34% expressed agreement to the offer.

We appeal to the UST administration to embody the university’s motto of “Truth in Charity” and its core values of “Competence, Commitment, and Compassion” by respecting its faculty’s labor rights to fair wages, a decent living for themselves and their families, and safe and healthy working conditions.

Universities should prioritize improving the state of their faculty members’ labor rights, who in the first place make them universities. Respect for faculty members’ labor rights impacts positively on students’ right to quality education, which students are even paying for in the case of the country’s private universities.

Without the UST administration’s immediate and adequate response, the USTFU has every right to exercise its right to strike, and we hope that the UST administration and the national government will respect this right. Workers’ right to collectively bargain is almost meaningless without their right to strike when managements refuse to heed their legitimate demands.