Selling Labor Down the River

Business World
Thursday, September 24, 1998
Calling a Spade
By Solita Collas-Monsod

And, I thought to myself, their capitulation would be understandable. But they are clearly made of sterner stuff. Would that all of us have the same courage of our convictions.

And what was PAL management's reaction to all this? I watched in fascination as a management spokesman, with a supercilious air, announced that even if the vote had been a "yes," the decision to close remained because the referendum result was only one of the considerations on whether to close or not. That certainly was not the media "spin" of PAL earlier, as echoed also by government. In other words, all that effort and humiliation on the part of labor would have been for nothing.

Damn their eyes.

And now it turns out the government does have some options to avert the closure of PAL and the ensuing transport crisis.

All of a sudden some presidential decree or other has been discovered and dusted off for reuse, to the effect that the Securities and Exchange Commission has the power to override management's closure decision, or take over the management of the company, much like the treatment of a bank under receivership. Other options are being explored -- a form of bailout — leasing the closed company's equipment from its creditors and continuing operations in one form or another.

The Senate, heretofore mute (supposedly because Congress is in recess), has suddenly found its voice, and is coming out with most of these alternatives.

All of these, one must understand, either coming to light or taking place only one day before the scheduled airline closure. The "last two minutes" routine.

But for the almost one week since Lucio Tan or technically the PAL Board of Directors announced the closure of PAL with nary a peep from the government directors (led by Bangko Sentral Governor Gabby Singson), the PAL employees and the rest of the country were left twisting in the wind. For that one week, government's response to the anguish of the PAL employees who were about to lose their jobs because they insisted on their constitutional right to collective bargaining, was to add its own pressure to the PAL management's economic blackmail.

•    There was nothing illegal about suspending a CBA for ten years.

•     You can't eat a CBA.

•    That CBA suspension was a condition of PAL's creditors and investors.

•    Only lawyers and union leaders were benefiting from the union position.

•    Government was helpless against Lucio Tan who was not even returning the President's call.

All the above issuing from the lips of government officials, particularly from the President and the Secretary of Finance. Causing sleepless nights not only for the PAL employees and their families, but also for owners of businesses dependent on PAL flights for their freight and cargo requirements, or for tourists and balik-bayans who might be stranded, those in the tourist service industries, families with children away in school.

All for what?

To get the PAL employees to override.