Column by Ducky Paredes

MALAYA

Friday, November 1, 1996

I am glad that I do not own companies or manage them. Certainly, if I owned Philippine Airlines, I would not be able to fathom the logic of the PALEA, the rank and file union of PAL.

Management wants to sell the employees shares in the company at the price of P5 per share, the par value. Well, PALEA is on record as saying that this constitutes an attempt to bust the union which is why it has gone on strike, to protest such union-busting activities as giving employees a chance to own shares in the company.

One supposed that if management increases wages without coursing it through a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), this would also constitute union-busting.

My personal experience in dealing with unions is also one of complete amazement. As part of management, I was told to talk to the officers of the union who were my drinking buddies.

I did. I told them that it would not be a good idea to include in their CBA demands a provision for a one month Christmas bonus. You would be better off taking whatever management can give, I told them over bottles of beer. In fact, I may even have told them the truth: which was that management would be giving out bonuses that year equivalent to several months' pay.

No, they said. This is something that we have decided should be in the CBA in order to protect the union members.

Well, when Christmas time came around, we, the non-union managers, had almost half-a year's pay in our pockets. The union members, of course, took home only their mandated one-month pay in addition to their 13th month. They could have had the same thing as us if only they had not been so bull-headed.

The way one sees it, the PALEA is against the growth of PAL. It resists the idea that the airline has gotten into a contract with General Electric making PAL a facility for the overhauling of engines in the region.

The airline which has an over-staffing of close to 30 percent is looking for things that its excess employees can do so that they can be useful to the company. What is wrong with that? Hardworking folk are usually disturbed by the sight of so many people doing so little work.

Calling the strike at this time endangers the future plans of the airline. If management is not yet into union-busting, it should promptly get into it. Having the kind of union that it has, no wonder PAL has not been doing to well. In the last three years it has lost some P4 billion and will lose this year still another P1 billion.

PAL is losing at the rate of P3 million a day. It has its hands full trying to survive. It has no time for busting unions.