Salary Increase

I hope someone responds to this so that we’d have an informed decision.

I have a question regarding salary increase po in an ESL school. This school has been up for only almost three years.

1. The teachers relayed a letter to the employer indicating their desire to an increase of their hourly rate.
2. The school does not have a CBA or any sort of internal policy with regard to wages.
3. The management actually responded to the request, but without teachers being informed about it formally, salaries were just increased as per the pay slips.
4. The thing is, only some teachers got the increase.
5. When asked about the reason, they said that it was based on length of service. To elaborate, only the teachers who were employed from the beginning without taking a substantial length of leave received the increase.
6. Therefore, those who 1) were employed after the specified employment period 2) took a substantial length of LOA , did not receive an increase.
7. The increase came from the employer and not for the purpose of abiding by any wage order.

The questions are:
1. Does the management have the prerogative to do this?
2. Is “length of service” enough as basis to discriminate on the wages of the teachers? Don’t they have to consider the employee’s performance/ evaluation also?
3. How about the treatment of those who continuously worked part-time, and those who took leaves, but were always full time?

What measures could the teachers take in this case? Thank you very much for taking the time reading this.

1. yes
2. the school has the prerogative to give increases/bonuses however they see fit.
3. they dont have too. as long as they don't discriminate against gender, religion etc. kung gusto lang nila bigyan ng increase is mga maganda or sexy, its their prerogative

Thank you very much for answering. I understand that employers have the right to decide on how to manage his business.

...though what irks me is that there is no policy with regard to this.. They just implemented it without telling us beforehand, it was effective without us knowing why or how. They didn't even tell us that it was granted or whatever. Shouldn't they have informed us first that such would be the rule. Do the employees not have a say in determining what is deserving for a salary increase as it somehow affects them?

What about our rights to participate in the decision-making processes to the extent that it affects us? I believe that we cannot dictate what must be, but can't we at least be allowed to air our side with regard to it?

nope, unless you negotiated some sort of salary increase mechanism BEFORE you accepted employment, salary increases aside from the raising of minimum wage is SOLELY the prerogative the employer. No inputs from the employee is mandated by govt.
you can air your side but the employer does not have to listen

Unless this is in a collective bargaining agreement, you have no right to make those demands beyond what is statutorily mandated, as lukelyle said earlier.