Joining the Jobless

Business World
Monday, September 21, 1998
My Cup of Tea
By Ninez Cacho-Olivares

So what are the Philippine Airlines (PAL) union leaders trying to prove by insisting, even at this late date, on a hard stance towards the Lucio Tan rescue package?

And why do these leaders refuse to let the employees decide for themselves, through a referendum, whether or not they want to work alongside management to save their jobs and the airline?

It is almost certain that more than half of the PAL workforce do not share the sentiments of the union leaders, including the leaders of the pilots and the cabin crew. Most of them do not want to lose their jobs, especially in these uncertain economic times. Most PAL employees know it would be difficult to get other jobs, owing to the fact that their background and training have prepared them for airline work.

Take the pilots, as an example. All their work life centered on flying planes. So they lose their jobs when the company closes down. Just what type of job opportunities are open to them? A flying job with a foreign airline? What chance will most of them have when other airlines are also faced with financial difficulties and are cutting costs too?

The most some of them can hope for is to fly private planes if they want to stay close to home.

But just how many wealthy Filipinos own private jets and helicopters?

The flight attendants are situated simi¬larly. They have been trained to attend to the needs of airline passengers and may know which wine to serve, but there are doubts that they have tucked into their educational background an MBA or a PhD degree that can get them good paying jobs. These flight attendants are hardly likely to turn to waitressing in restaurants, even those in five-star hotels.

Even the employees in PAL ticket counters can't expect to easily find similar jobs in other airlines, domestic and foreign. Even if  some local airlines expand, they can't be expected to take in all of those affected in the PAL closure. Then too, if they do take some in, it is almost certain they won't be given the same benefits and salaries they enjoyed as PAL employees, not in a buyers' market.

One wonders why PAL employees leave their fate to their union leaders. These union officials are hardly in a position to guarantee them jobs when the airline finally closes shop. Neither, for that matter, can they offer these employees financial assistance after they lose their jobs.

Chances are, whatever money the union got through union dues, will be difficult to account by the leaders, once PAL closes down. When this happens, there is hardly any hope for a PAL employee to even get a fraction of their money back.

Perhaps at the back of their minds, leaders of PAL unions truly believe that the government will take over.

After all, the Constitution provides the President of the Republic with extra pow¬ers in times of national emergency. Per¬haps these union leaders believe that gov¬ernment will not allow PAL's closure.

Given economic problems beset¬ting the country and the nation and given further the growing budget deficit that is bogging down government, taking over PAL is something the Estrada Administration needs like a hole in the head.

Truculent union leaders insist that their refusal is anchored on principles. To accede to a 10-year suspension of the CBA is to give up their rights as a union. Yet they must know that when PAL closes down, the unions close down with it. Surely these union leaders do not expect members who have become jobless as a result of their stupid decision, to keep on paying union dues, when there is no more union to speak of.

Sometimes, half a loaf is better than none.

At a guess, some of these union leaders who have adopted a hard stance on the rescue package are the very ones who have not been taken in by PAL after they had ignored the return to the work order on time.

Chances are high that those who have been retrenched are the very ones who insist on not giving the PAL employees the opportunity to cast a vote via a referendum. In all probability, their logic goes this way: Since they are jobless, so should all the other PAL employees who have been re¬tained be jobless too.

Even the pilots who claim it would be better for PAL to close down haven't been able to come up with a convincing explan¬ation in refusing the rescue plan which, incidentally, was not Tan's own but those of PAL's creditors and investors.

What the ALPAP pilots say these days is that government should investigate Tan because while PAL was losing money, his service and supplies companies catering to PAL were raking it in.

Even granting that the claims are true. PAL is a private company and government has no business ordering an investigation of the airline. Besides, PAL has a board, represented by its investors. If these in¬vestors, who hold board seats, including SSS and GSIS, found nothing irregular in Tan coming up with allied businesses that had PAL and other airlines as clients, they, as voting board members should have put a stop to this practice, not the government or the PAL employees.

It will not be the PAL employees and their union leaders that will carry the burden o f  paving off PAL's creditors. It will be the PAL investors.

Even when PAL was losing money, the employees did not lose money in that they were still being paid.

Union members and leaders just don't know when to stop. It's still a "gimmie everything you have mentality” that they embrace.

Regret will eventually line their faces when they start looking for new jobs.