PAL agrees to suspend outsourcing program

PHILIPPINE Airlines has agreed to suspend its plan to outsource non-core services that would lay off more than 3,000 workers after meeting with the airline’s union officials Friday, Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said.

The moratorium would be good for 30 days, hopefully enough time for the airline and the restive union to work out an acceptable solution on how to put the ailing flag carrier back on the road to profitability, Roque said.

The consensus was reached after a four-hour meeting at the Labor Department, where the PAL Employees Association, according to sources, rejected a management proposal for three board seats in exchange for a 10-year suspension of the collective bargaining agreement.

Roque said he was happy that the threatened labor strike had been averted, and hoped that the airline’s management and the union would have reached an amicable settlement when the two sides returned for the next round of negotiations next month.

Union president Gerardo Rivera said his group had rejected outright a management proposal to grant every employee 60,000 shares of stock, worth more than P300,000, in exchange for industrial peace.

“Any proposal that would benefit a few is not acceptable to us,” he said. “If any PAL worker is given a board seat, he does not represent [the union] or the workers.”

The union plans to submit a position paper on May 17 giving counter-proposals on how the airline could reduce its operating expenses without resorting to any more lay-offs of its more than 8,000 employees, according to Rivera.

Airline president Jaime Bautista, who led the management contingent in the Labor Department meeting, declined to answer questions from reporters. –Vito Barcelo, Manila Standard Today