Pearls to Swine

Malaya
Friday September 18, 1998
[Column]
By Rodolfo Dula

With two other columnists I had a close encounter with taipan Lucio Tan for the first time Thursday last week. I chose not to report on it earlier, however, so as soon not to prejudice the delicate matter with which he was then preoccupied.

Before he arrived for our Japanese “bento” box lunch at the Century Park we had been told that he would take any question, so as soon as he sat down I asked whether he was indeed the buyer of the San Miguel shares First Pacific recently unloaded. Nice try, but no dice. Subject closed. Next please.

Clearly the Kapitan wanted our interview to focus on PAL. He told us he had just made a last offer to PALEA, the union to which most of the airline’s rank and file workforce belong, and was expecting their reply no later than the following day.

What a deal: In return for agreeing to a 10-year suspension of their CBA with management, every employee who had not yet collected separation pay, still some 9,000 in all, would receive 60,000 shares of the company gratis et amore. Thus altogether they would come to own 20 percent of the stock, entitling them to three seats on the 15-man board.

No subscription plan, but a gift outright, with no strings attached, no hidden riders, no fine print for the unsuspecting to miss. But that was that, nothing more to follow, take it or leave it.

That was plenty, I thought. Generous beyond belief, flabbergasting even under the circumstances but then, unlike the blasted pilots and bratty flight attendants, the card carriers of PALEA hadn’t been impossible. They’d not shut the door completely, hadn’t been ornery and truculent for a change.

Perhaps they had finally seen the light. Had seen the score, realized that time had run out and more hemming and hawing wouldn’t work to their or anybody else’s favour, and thus were ready to choose gliding to some gold over the rainbow over free fall to a crash landing.

Gold? Well not exactly, not yet, because those shares aren’t worth very much just now. But at least they’ll still have their jobs, can continue looking forward to pay envelopes twice a month, until the drought is over or a better opportunity elsewhere comes along. And opting for the latter won’t mean forfeiting their shares, either.

Alas, something must truly be rotten beyond helping within PAL, and I don’t mean the aircraft or the food because PALEA’s executive board, after earlier vetting Kapitan’s proposal, has turned around and decided to order its members to commit seppuku en masse instead.

You know, the ritual where defeated and disgraced Japanese warriors plunge a long and very sharp sword into their bellies, push it sideways and then upwards to gut themselves out, and slowly and painfully bleed to death.

Defeated and disgraced? Yes, but in this case, by their own pigheaded, pea-brained choice. Warriors? Maybe, if that’s what you’d like to call anyone who fights for not cause other than to perish.

And perish they may well have by today. For as I write, the directors of PAL are still in session, and my radio is on in the event they reach a decision before my deadline. On the table is just one item: whether PAL should close shop forthwith or not.

Mr. Tan had told PALEA he would have no choice but the first should they reject his offer, and during our session there was no doubting his grim determination to literally go for broke. I understand, however, that once again the government is importuning him not to, and the hotline between the boardroom and the Palace hasn’t stopped burning since the make or break meeting started.

The last time President Estrada played referee, the Kapitan ended up dipping into his other operations further just to pay the 6,000 or so retrenched 50 percent in separation benefits up front, and the balance once processing of their papers was completed. The bill? Another P2 or P3 billion, we understand.

Is there more where that came from? I imagine so. But to expect him to cough anywhere near that kind of moolah again is to misread his lips. Tan’s parting with these hard won stocks is a signal that he will be slot cum ATM machine to the extortionist PAL tribe no more.

But wait, I’ve just heard over DZRH that Erap is about to talk turkey with PALEA, and that PAL management is due to join them. The lateness of the hour notwithstanding, I’m still hoping someone will blink. Otherwise the national flag carrier’s goose is really cooked.

The thing is, left to themselves, the union would probably have bought the shares-for-peace scheme already. However it’s under the umbrella of the leftist labor alliance, and playing god there now is a chronic sociopath named Popoy Lagman.

Actually nihilist is the better word to describe someone who won’t stop making trouble until everyone loses and everything is in a shambles. One whose unalterable conviction is that the only story it, and that he alone can rebuild it afterwards.

Communism is finished, and the unending mass conflict it espouses has been rejected everywhere else. But Mr. Lagman and his ilk just won’t give up the red flag. Captured, charged, and then peremptorily freed, he now does nothing but agitate the working class to embrace his failed revolution. And the deeper the hole he digs for them, the more indispensable and lucrative his role as pied piper to the desperate becomes.

He’ll be the happiest man indeed, should Lucio Tan be obliged anew to throw more pearls to swine.