Clarifications on Alpap Labor Cases

Philippine Daily Inquirer
Monday, September 7, 1998
OPINION

THE NEWS reports on our pending cases before the National Labor Relations Commission (PDI 8/28-29/98) were full of inaccuracies. We feel that some corrections and clarifications are necessary in the interest of fairness.

• There were two cases submit¬ted to the NLRC on June 29: the il¬legal lockout case against Philippine Airlines for refusing to accept all the officers and members of the Airline Pilots Association of the Philippines as ordered by the labor secretary on June 26, and a pleading for a tempo¬rary restraining order (TRO) to pre¬vent management from hiring pilots in the pendency of the lockout.

• Alpap. on Aug. 12, submitted to the NLRC an urgent motion for resolution after being informed that management had already hired 120 new pilots and two pilots on contract. Alpap believes that management is preempting any resolution of the dis¬pute pending before the courts by forcing a "new-hire" status on pilots who are already financially dislo-cated. This imposition is patently il¬legal and abnormal considering that these pilots, who have been sum¬marily dismissed in the media, have not received their termination papers until now. Management, in effect, is hiring new pilots which it has not -terminated yet!

• The terms of the legalities of the pilots' strike on June 5 and Alpap's compliance with the labor secretary's order to return to work on June 26 are yet to be determined by the appropriate courts or by the labor sec¬retary. The wholesale dismissal of the pilots, on the basis of an illegal strike, and the subsequent refusal of man¬agement to accept the returning pi¬lots were PAL management's impe¬rious decisions based on its own pronouncements. The silence, however, of the Department of Labor and Em¬ployment with regard to this blatant usurpation of its power, instigated by PAL, is deafening.

• The NLRC's final determina¬tion (after two painstaking months of holding the displaced pilots in limbo) that it does not have jurisdiction over the two cases brought before it by Alpap shows the kind of bureaucracy that foments the perception that the dispensation of justice in this coun¬try is based on economic realities: it depends on who has more money to balance the equation!

• The persistence of PAL manage¬ment to accept pilots on a "new-hire" status from Alpap is illegal. They have to be terminated first before the new status could ensue. Those who returned to management from Alpap were made to accept this condition without being terminated first. Any legal termination provides for the payment of benefits already earned from the company which PAL is un¬willing to give. Hence, PAL is ac¬cepting the returning pilots as new hires without a previous termination. This is designed to force the finan¬cially-strapped pilots into accepting any condition for reemployment in order to survive. This is also designed to save the company from paying some P2.5 billion in earned benefits to the pilots that management has summarily dismissed in the media. Many of our members who have de¬fected to the side of management have done so not because they are the new breed of dignified and self-sacrificing pilots. They were just so afraid of the economic consequences of a strike for the sake of their own survival.

All throughout this painful exer¬cise, Alpap has maintained its faith in the law. We do not expect the DOLE to make a decision in our fa¬vor. We expect it to rule according to law. And when the very survival of 600 pilots who were terminated illegally en masse is at stake, the DOLE should rule fast. Its seeming inability to rule with dispatch be¬comes suspect when one of the par¬ties in this labor dispute is known to be very close to the President. FLORENDO R. UMALI, spokes¬person, Airline Pilots Association of the Philippines, Andrews Avenue, Pasay City 1300