"Wage" and "Salary" Defined

The term "wages," as distinguished from "salary," applies to the compensation for manual labor, skilled or unskilled, paid at stated times, and measured by the day, week, month, or season, while "salary" denotes a higher degree of employment, or a superior grade of services, and implies a position or office; by contrast, the term "wages" indicates inconsiderable pay for a lower and less responsible character of employment, while "salary" is suggestive of a larger and more permanent or fixed compensation for more important service. 

By some of the authorities, it has been noted that the word "wages" in its ordinary acceptance, has a less extensive meaning than the word "salary," "wages" being ordinarily restricted to sums paid as hire or reward to domestic or menial servants and to sums paid to artisans, mechanics, laborers, and other employees of like class, as distinguished from the compensation of clerks, officers of public corporations, and public offices.  

In many situations, however, the words "wages" and "salary" are synonymous. (35 Am. Jur., Sec. 63, pp. 496-497)

Our Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, i.e., the words "wages" and "salary" are in essence synonymous.

Article 97

ART. 97.  Definition.

As used in this Title:  (a)  "Person" means an individual, partnership, association, corporation, business trust, legal representative, or any organized group of persons.

(b)  "Employer" includes any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee and shall include the Government and all its branches, subdivision and instrumentalities, all government-owned or -controlled corporations and institutions, as well as non-profit private institutions, or organizations.

(c)  "Employee" includes any individual employed by an employer.

(d)  "Agriculture" includes farming in all its branches and, among other things, includes the cultivation and tillage of soil, dairying, the production, cultivation, growing and harvesting of any agricultural and horticultural commodities, the raising of livestock or poultry, and any practices performed by a farmer on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with such farming operations, but does not include the manufacturing or processing of sugar, coconuts, abaca, tobacco, pineapples or other farm products.

(e)  "Employ" includes to suffer or permit to work.

(f)  "Wage" paid to any employee shall mean the remuneration or earnings, however designated, capable of being expressed in terms of money, whether fixed or ascertained on a time, task, piece, or commission basis, or other method of calculating the same, which is payable by an employer to an employee under a written or unwritten contract of employment for work done or to be done, or for services rendered or to be rendered and includes the fair and reasonable value, as determined by the Secretary of Labor, of board, lodging, or other facilities customarily furnished by the employer to the employee.  "Fair and reasonable value" shall not include any profit to the employer or to any person affiliated with the employer.