PAL resorts to job outsourcing

Philippine Airlines union president Edgardo Oredina did not sound optimistic when he apprised members of the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association late last year about the financial predicament of PAL and the state of the global aviation industry.

Oredina informed his members that PAL had hatched a plan to “outsource several operation units” that could lead to the loss of regular jobs held by some 4,000 employees. Alarmed, Oredina wrote Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, seeking the intervention of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on PAL’s job outsourcing strategy.

The union chief, along with senior union officials, also sought a consultation meeting with Labor Secretary Marianito Roque to discuss PAL’s plan and the airline’s claim of being “on the brink of bankruptcy.”

“After we updated [Secretary Roque] regarding our predicament… on the issue of PAL’s planned outsourcing, we asked him if there is any possibility of a government takeover of PAL if the need arises. He informed us that the possibility is very remote for the government has no capacity to operate an airline but he assured us that he will help on the issue of job preservation, no worker will be displaced,” Oredina’s letter read.

PAL’s union, however, seemed resigned to PAL’s fate, especially after its representatives to the recent International Transport Workers’ Federation meeting in Sri Lanka learned that other aviation workers in the world were facing the same problems.

“Ironically, ITF’s presentation also dealt with the great impact to the operating revenues made by the so-called ‘low-cost and no-frills’ airlines in the region like Cebu Pacific, Air Asia and the likes, leading to the heavy losses on the legacy airlines and flag carriers like PAL,” Oredina said in his report.

He relayed that other delegates to the convention, including labor unions from Cathay Pacific, Malaysian Airlines, Thai International Airways, Air India and Garuda Indonesia, revealed that due to the tight financial conditions of their respective airlines, flag carriers resorted to “retrenchment, reduction of working hours, pay cuts and outsourcing to counter the challenges of the low-cost airlines.”

“… we can conclude that unions worldwide, especially in the aviation industry, must be more dynamic, proactive, innovative and aggressive adapting to the current changes in the industry, within the framework of maintaining the essence of unionism…,” Oredina said.

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