PAL Employees Have Been Had

Malaya

Sunday, November 3, 1996

Editorial

THE cat is out of the bag. The wildcat strike pulled off by some ground employes of Philippine Airlines apparently was the handiwork of the usual clutch of agitators from the Left.

Ostensibly the strike was called to protest alleged management "union-busting." This, after two separate orders from the Department of Labor stopping management from locking the workers out and the union from striking because their disputes were not strikeable.

But who cares about mere pieces of paper? Who cares about the commuters? The PAL Employees' Association wanted to keep the planes on the ground. PALEA, it turns out, has other things in mind.

Like embarrassing the government as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation ministerial meeting and leaders' summit approach. Was last week's strike perhaps just a dry run?

Will PALEA President Alexander Barrientos care to answer? Or does he want to confer first with Felimon "Popoy" Lagman, chief of the anti-Sison faction in the communist movement. Renato Constantino Jr., organizer of the anti-APEC Manila People's Forum, attended a press conference called by the strikers Friday. He said he was there simply to express his group's sympathy with the strikers.

Are we again up to our usual Red-baiting? Bet we are. Oh, we know that the Anti-Subversion Act has been repealed. It is no crime nowadays to be a member of the communist party of whichever version, the rejectionists of Lagman or the reaffirmists of Jose Ma. Sison.

That doesn't mean, however, we cannot call them the lying and manipulative saboteurs that they are. They seek to pull down our economic house so they could build their socialist utopia on its ashes. That's the fundamental article of their ideological faith. But have they ever openly said so?

The rest of the people, an overwhelming number of them, won't have no truck with their pie in the sky ideology which is, by the way, not the reason we are opposed to these groups. It is the calculating violence, the use of terror as an instrument of politics, that sets these groups apart from ordinary political parties or pressure groups. This we loathe and condemn.

Going back to PAL, the union officials have betrayed their members by allowing themselves to be used as stooges. The members should throw them out, not the least for being stupid in not seeing they were being manipulated.