Wage Order NCR-28 Exposes DOLE’s Injunction Standoff

What It Means

• The NCR wage board approved Wage Order NCR-28 on September 8, granting a straight ₱60 daily minimum wage increase for non-agricultural workers in Metro Manila.
• Wage Order NCR-28 arrives while the larger ₱85 increase under Wage Order NCR-27 remains frozen by a Pasig Regional Trial Court injunction issued in August.
• Days before the vote, Kamanggagawa party-list Rep. Eli San Fernando argued DOLE could legally implement NCR-27 immediately since the petitioners never posted the required ₱10 billion bond.
• DOLE’s decision to build a new order instead of acting on that argument shows the agency does not consider the bond argument safe to act on, whatever it says in committee hearings.
• Minimum wage earners absorb the difference: ₱60 now instead of the ₱85 they were originally promised, with no confirmed timeline for the remaining ₱25.

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The Board Chose A New Order Over A Legal Fight

The Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board for the National Capital Region voted 4-3 on September 8 to approve Wage Order NCR-28, a fresh ₱60 daily minimum wage increase for private sector workers in Metro Manila. DOLE-NCR Director Roy Buenafe confirmed the vote at a House hearing the following day, telling lawmakers the order had already been forwarded to the National Wages and Productivity Commission for the mandatory review that precedes publication. If the commission affirms it, the non-agricultural minimum wage rises from ₱695 to ₱755, with effectivity targeted for September 26 or 27 depending on publication timing.

Wage Order NCR-28 exists because Wage Order NCR-27 does not, in practice. NCR-27 promised a total ₱85 increase in two tranches, ₱60 effective July 25 and another ₱25 on January 20, 2027, and was described by DOLE at the time as the largest single daily minimum wage increase ever approved in the region, benefiting more than 1.1 million workers. It never took effect. Construction firms Readycon Trading and Construction Corp. and R-II Builders Inc. petitioned the Pasig Regional Trial Court Branch 152, arguing the wage board failed to properly weigh employers’ capacity to pay. The court issued a temporary restraining order on July 24, followed by a writ of preliminary injunction on August 13 that has kept NCR-27 suspended since.

The Two Orders Now Run On Separate Tracks

Wage Order NCR-28 does not replace NCR-27 or resolve the litigation around it. It is a second, procedurally independent order that delivers a smaller increase through a channel the Pasig court has not touched. DOLE and the Office of the Solicitor General continue to defend NCR-27 in court, having filed a motion for reconsideration on August 17 seeking to lift the injunction, while a separate petition from labor groups, including Kamanggagawa, asks the Supreme Court to strike down the lower court’s intervention entirely on jurisdictional grounds.

That leaves NCR-27 and Wage Order NCR-28 moving on parallel paths at the same time, defended by the same agency, covering the same workers, built on different legal footing. Lawmakers noticed the tension immediately. Deputy Speaker Raymond Mendoza questioned the basis for issuing a new order while the dispute over NCR-27 remains unresolved, warning it could complicate DOLE’s own legal position.

San Fernando’s Bond Argument Has Real Textual Support

Three days before the board vote, Kamanggagawa party-list Rep. Eli San Fernando pressed Labor Secretary Francis Tolentino at a House Committee on Appropriations hearing on DOLE’s proposed 2027 budget. San Fernando’s argument was procedural, not sentimental: Section 4(b) of Rule 58 of the Rules of Civil Procedure states that a writ of preliminary injunction shall be issued upon approval of the requisite bond. Readycon and R-II Builders have not posted the ₱10 billion bond the Pasig court set, and have instead asked the court to reduce the amount or accept a property bond, installment arrangement, or surety bond in its place.

San Fernando’s reading got independent backing from an unexpected source. At a separate House hearing on the judiciary’s own 2027 budget, Court Administrator Ma. Theresa Gomez-Estoesta confirmed on record that a preliminary injunction cannot be issued or implemented without the required bond, calling the bond “a required step before a writ of injunction can be issued.” Citing that exchange, San Fernando pushed Tolentino directly: if there is no bond, there is no injunction, so what is stopping DOLE from implementing Wage Order NCR-27 now.

Tolentino’s Response Rests On A Narrower Point

Tolentino did not dispute the bond rule. He disputed who gets to act on it. “Hindi po ang DOLE, hindi po ang litigants ang magdedesisyon kung mali ang proseso, ang magdedesisyon nito ay ang husgado,” he told the committee, meaning it is the court, not DOLE or the litigants, that decides whether the process was defective. He added that lifting an injunction “is not a matter of self-help” and pointed to the pending OSG motion as the proper channel for resolving the question. San Fernando, unsatisfied, moved to defer the entire DOLE budget hearing. The committee voted the motion down, 31 to 7.

Both positions hold up on their own terms. San Fernando is right that the text of Rule 58 conditions issuance on bond approval, and right that the Court Administrator confirmed it independently. Tolentino is right that the Pasig court already issued the writ on August 13, and that a defect in how it was issued is a question for the issuing court, or a higher court, to rule on, not a determination an agency can make for itself and act on unilaterally. An agency that decides on its own a standing court order no longer applies, and implements a policy the order was meant to block, takes on real legal exposure if a court later disagrees, including the possibility that wages already paid under a struck-down order create a mess for employers and workers alike.

DOLE’s Own Conduct Is The Clearest Evidence

The strongest signal in this dispute is not anything said in committee. It is what DOLE built. If DOLE’s legal team genuinely believed the bond argument was safe to act on, implementing NCR-27 outright would have been faster, cheaper, and more direct than constructing an entirely new wage order through the full tripartite board process, a process that took months and now carries its own separate legal exposure. DOLE did not take that route. It built Wage Order NCR-28 instead, a parallel structure that delivers a smaller increase without testing San Fernando’s reading against the Pasig court at all.

That choice tells decision-layer readers more than either man’s floor rhetoric does. DOLE’s public position is that it stands behind NCR-27 and is actively fighting to reinstate it. Its practical position, visible in what it actually did, is that it will not risk defying a standing writ on a bond technicality, even one confirmed by the Court Administrator. The two positions are not identical, and the gap between them is where the ₱25 workers are still owed currently sits.

The Gap Now Belongs To Workers, Not Lawmakers

Wage Order NCR-28 was not built to win an argument. It was built to avoid having one. DOLE chose a slower, smaller increase over testing whether a bond technicality could unlock the larger order it says it still supports. The Supreme Court petition on court jurisdiction over wage orders remains the only mechanism that resolves the underlying fight. Until it rules, the ₱25 difference between what Wage Order NCR-27 promised and what Wage Order NCR-28 delivers stays with the workers who were told to expect the larger number first.

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