Beginnings of Self-Destruction

The Philippine Journal

Monday, November 4, 1996

By GIL SANTOS

WHAT IS COMMON BETWEEN the wildcat strikers of the PALEA and the Metro Manila squatters who refuse to move out of public and private properties, who hit the headlines these past few days?

Their mindset is that they are poor; therefore, the entire nation — the Filipino people, the government — owe them the obligation to improve their lot according to their choice.

And they staged their acts at this time, because they believe this is the best time to get concessions from the government.

They believe the establishment will give in to their demands, because it must show a peaceful and orderly facade, just before and during the APEC Summit Meeting this month.

The Philippines and its government leadership, their reasoning goes, cannot afford to be embarrassed now, so it will be more their ally in their fight for whatever they want now.

These two groups, I expect, do not even think for one moment of their productivity or their contribution to the corporate or sectoral push for progress.

They are quick to point out that labor and the poor are social responsibilities of government. But they do not even say anything about their own obligation to the entire nation, as members of our free and democratic society.

There is a mental gap somewhere , when some citizens see only what government or their employers must do for them, instead of assessing their own value to the entire Filipino community.

Indeed, this medicant thinking has its own built-in mechanism of self-destruction — unless such a negative attitude is already desperately adopted by the entire nation as its norm.

Certainly, as a people, we are not that desperate!

It is an abominable strike the PALEA staged, leaving the public stranded in airports, and causing losses easily more costly than a rampaging typhoon damaging food crops in Central and Northern Luzon.

These losses are in cancelled business appointments, opportunities and contracts, because the affected parties or persons did not make their flight connections due to the strike.

The striking PALEA members, naturally, did not consider the paying public.

"Damn them if they suffer. The PALEA must get what it wants from management now." And the timing is now.

Ergo, it also meant losses in taxes and, therefore, fund shortages; and eventually insufficient delivery of basic services by the government (like education, health, peace and order, among others).

Granting that the PALEA's target is the management headed by Mr. Lucio Tan, whom they might hate because of his tax case for allegedly not paying P25 billion (he incidentally won the case in the Supreme Court), they just successfully gave him an excuse to turn down their demands.

Why?

Because the strike meant revenue losses for PAL's management, too. So now, it can invoke inability to meet labor's future demands in billions of pesos over the next two years.

There must be a better way to settle labor-management disputes. Matured labor leaders go into peace negotiations — dialogues. The days of Karl Marx's social class confrontations and ideological radicalism are over. In fact, President Fidel V. Ramos is committed to move for better benefits for Filipino labor in the coming APEC meetings, as part of our national action program.