PAL: People Always Last

SOME 40 years ago, Sonny Coloma was a campus firebrand. He was elected to the University of the Philippines Student Council as one of the candidates of a leftwing alliance, which included the KM, SDK and similar radical youth groups that supported the “national democratic” program of the Communist Party.

Sonny was even one of the first campus figures to be picked up and “detained” in Camp Crame soon after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972.

That was a lifetime ago.

Like many other members of his generation, the passage of time has coincided with a steady but certain drift to the right. Sonny must have comforted himself with such aphorisms as, “If a man is not a socialist in his youth, he
has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 30, he has no head.”

That conformist chestnut has been attributed to Georges Clemenceau, a one-time radical who became French prime minister in 1906-1909 and again in 1917-1920. Ain’t Google grand? Anyway, there are many variations of this saying, and they are invariably invoked to rationalize ideological opportunism.

Nowadays, Sonny prefers to be addressed as Secretary Herminio Coloma. After all, he now holds office at The Palace of Malacañan (note, without the “g”) and heads the Presidential Communications Operations Office, one of three—or more?—palace staffs whose functions used to be performed by just one, the now defunct Office of the Press Secretary.

His place in the Cabinet of President B. S. Aquino 3rd was the reward for the key role he reportedly played in last year’s campaign of then-senator Noynoy. It did not hurt that Coloma was also a ranking official of a university in Makati, whose mayor then, Jejomar Binay, is now vice president.

Coloma’s metamorphosis into a conservative was exemplified by his persnickety reaction to the industrial action staged Tuesday by hundreds of Philippine Airlines (PAL) employees who—if the company has its way, which now seems likely—are set to lose their jobs.

Coloma was said to have “assailed” the mass action staged by members of the PAL Employees Association (PALEA), “when there is a typhoon [as it] shows insensitivity towards the riding public.” Wow.

“The government has adhered to the rule of law in addressing the PALEA’s issue on labor outsourcing and we call on PALEA to do the same,” he was quoted saying. “It is also provided by Civil Aviation law that air travel must be reliable, safe and secure. Government will do its duty to do its job in this regard.”

As “Pedring” lashed Luzon, thousands of passengers were stranded after PAL canceled all flights to and from Manila due to, as one press account put it, “its employees’ last-ditch effort to save their jobs.”

Even as airline officials were trying to sort out the mess—which, if you come right down to it, was of their own making—PAL’s spin doctors went to work on the news media to highlight the hassles that PALEA’s work stoppage brought to 14,000 passengers.

Note how, for instance, the TV and radio news that evening contained numerous sound bites of irate passengers—but hardly any interviews of protesting PAL employees who are now staring joblessness in the face.
PALEA’s work stoppage—which does not qualify as a “strike,” legalistically speaking—was meant to protest PAL’s plan to collapse three departments: call center reservations, in-flight catering and airport services. The pink slips take effect today, September 30.

Covered by the mass layoff are 2,600 employees—many of them PAL employees for decades—who have been offered openings in three separate companies. Sky Kitchen, Sky Logistics and SPi Global Holdings, referred to as the “third-party service providers,” will replace the three closed departments.

According to PALEA, less than 15 percent of its members have agreed to the retirement benefits dangled by the airline management, while only just seven percent have accepted jobs with the outsourcing companies.

PAL’s outsourcing plan has been approved by the Department of Labor and (Un) Employment (DOLE), and also by the Office of the President. However, the case is still under appeal before the Court of Appeals.

PALEA officials have asked that the layoffs not be carried out because the appellate court has yet to rule on their plea. But PAL, DOLE and the Palace would have none of such legal niceties.

Many of the older PALEA members feel betrayed by the airline’s determination to dispense of their services. They recall that in 1998 they had agreed to an extraordinary deal to suspend negotiations for new collective bargaining agreements over a 10-year period in order to give PAL the financial flexibility to return to profitability.

PAL entered into corporate rehabilitation and slashed its fleet. In time, the airline was able to get back on its feet.

However, when the CBA moratorium that PALEA had agreed to expired in 2008, PAL unveiled its plan to collapse the three departments to which PALEA members belong and resort to outsourcing.

Meanwhile, PAL—once the country’s top air carrier—has been outpaced by relative newcomer Cebu Pacific. Even smaller airlines have eaten away at the market share of the former monopoly—a development that industry analysts have attributed to mismanagement.

And who know must pay for the price of executive negligence?

Not Lucio Tan and his underlings who have won the support of the Aquino administration—but the 2,600 members of PALEA whom Coloma had “assailed” for the “inconvenience” they caused to PAL customers.

In a country where the biggest fortunes were—and continue to be—built on the blatant exploitation of labor, the fate that is about to befall PALEA members may no longer come as a surprise.
Yet, it is an outrage still. –Dan Mariano, Manila Times

dansoy26@yahoo.com