Famous Last Words

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Thursday, September 24, 1998

Opinion

There’s the Rub

By Conrado De Quiros

THE ORIGINAL was Richard Gordon. He said at the height of the US bases debate, "You can't eat sovereignty."

Gordon, of course, said that in the context of championing the passage of the US bases treaty. The groups who were opposing the treaty were citing sovereignty among their reasons for wanting to kick out the bases. Gordon argued that there was much economic benefit to come from the bases treaty, and much economic loss to follow from its rejection, especially for the residents of Olongapo who stood to lose jobs and livelihood. Sovereignty is nice, he said, but it won't feed the impending poor of Olongapo.

Time has proved him wrong. You can eat sovereignty. Gordon in fact was first to rush to the head of the table when sovereignty served its buffet. Subic did not die of destitution and nostalgia; it prospered by leaps and bounds under the aegis of the SBMA. The residents of Olongapo did not pass on to oblivion, they became a republic unto themselves. Sovereignty proved so edible, Gordon tried as best he could to hold on to it—or its culinary expression—in the SBMA. He's still trying.

Comes now Joseph Estrada repeating history. Last weekend, he told the labor unions of PAL, "You can't eat a CBA.''

Erap said that while berating the unions for rejecting Lucio Tan's seemingly magnanimous offer to save the airline. That offer gave the unions several seats in the PAL board, with the appropriate stocks to go with it, in exchange for them agreeing not to push for a new CBA for 10 years. Palea, the ground crew union which counts the most number of PAL workers, initially accepted the offer but turned it down later. Fasap, the flight attendants union, rejected it outright. Both drew the line at scrapping collective bargaining. Which provoked Erap to blurt out, "What's the use of a CBA when you're hungry? You can't eat a CBA."

He won't need time to prove him wrong.

In fact, he doesn't need to wait for the future, he needs only look back at the past. To that time specifically when he appeared in a movie titled, "Bangkang Papel sa Dagat ng Apoy." That was only 15 years or so. In that movie, he plays a labor leader who leads a strike. He does so, amid the monumental sacrifices a strike entails, because the workers can't get a decent break. Earlier in the movie, an old man who has worked in the textile factory all his life is told he may get only a few years' worth of work at half pay by way of retirement benefit. The reason for this, the owners say, is that the company is losing. Which seems to be so, but only because the owners are passing off their profits from their factory to their other companies, the ones that do not employ too many workers.

You can eat a CBA. It's far more patently edible than sovereignty. Sovereignty takes long to reveal its gustatory delights, a CBA more swiftly so. A CBA is all a worker has—short of a strike—to assure that he and his family will eat. It's the heart and soul of unionizing, as we said the other day. Without collective bargaining, what do you need a union for? You might as well put up a social club. Collective bargaining is what assures that old men who have worked for a factory all their lives will get the retirement benefits they deserve. Collective bargaining is what assures that young women who marry and have children will get the maternity leave they need. Collectives bargaining is what assures that men and women who have nothing to live on but their toil will be able to live on it.

The CBA is not the cause of PAL's collapse; scrapping the CBA will not prevent PAL's collapse. Though while at this, who invented the CBA in the first place? The way PAL management is portraying it, you'd think the CBA was the handiwork of communists. In fact, collective bargaining is not a communistic tool, it is a resolutely capitalistic one. It follows the logic of open markets

You have a management that is trying to wring as much productivity as it can from its workers and a union that is trying to extract as much reward as it can from management and you reach an equilibrium representing just compensation. What's this? It's all right for employers’ to demand level playing fields, the rule of market forces, a reasonable return on investment, but not so workers?

As it is, the PAL unions are not trying to extract as much as they can from their employers. They are not asking for a raise, they are not asking for more benefits. They are merely trying to defend what they have, which they would lose without a CBA. The referendum last Tuesday showed clearly the sentiments of the majority of the workers in Palen. They should get the sentiments’ of Fasap and Alpap members as well just to see in what opprobrium the rank-and-file holds Tan's proposal. No one wants to lose his or her job. But only so long as it remains a job. A situation where your employer may be free to oppress you and expect you to slobber all over him in gratitude is not a job. It is masochism.

Indeed, the whole thing goes beyond PAL. PAL is merely the test case. The real question is: Do we still need a Department of Labor and Employment? Or more fundamentally, do we still need labor laws? For why should we bother to have labor laws when we do not want to follow them anyway? Why should we bother to have a labor department when we want to outlaw labor unions anyway? Let's stop the pretense. Let's abolish the DOLE, scrap labor laws and burn labor leaders in effigy or in the flesh.

It's idiotic. Labor laws are there to protect workers. Labor unions are there to protect workers. They are mandated by the Constitution. Yet what are Erap and Tan and their cohorts saying now but that labor laws may apply only in times of plenty? What are they saying now but that labor unions may unionize only in times of plenty? What in fact are they saying now but that workers should be protected only in times when they least need protecting?

You can eat a CBA. What you cannot eat are bile and guile and stupidity.