Leftists Tagged as PAL Strike Investigators

Malaya

Saturday, November 2, 1996

Union spurns DOLE return-to-work order

By GERRY DE BELEN AND MON ACASIO

The strike at the Philippine Airlines called by the PAL Employees' Association (Palea) is part of "caliberated mass actions" orchestrated by a leftist group sympathetic to Felimon "Popoy" Lagman to embarrass government before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation community, intelligence sources said yesterday.

The sources said they have monitored at least two meetings between Lagman, former head of the Manila-Rizal regional party committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, and officials of the Palea. The union which is manned mainly by ground services workers, is affiliated with the Buklurang Manggagawang Pilipino, an umbrella of labor-oriented organizations formed by Lagman. The BMP and its affiliate labor groups have been under watch by the APEC secretariat task group on security and intelligence, the sources said.

One of the meetings, the sources said, was held in Los Baños, Laguna last August 3. Aside from Lagman, the meeting was attended by Renato Constantino Jr., head of the leftist group Sanlakas, and Nilo de la Cruz alias Sergio Romero, chief of the Alex Boncayao Brigade.

Constantino is among organizers of the Manila People's Forum which wants to hold an anti-APEC forum to coincide with the APEC summit.

Constantino was also present in a press conference called by Palea in its Pasay office yesterday to announce it is going on with the strike.

An intelligence report earlier revealed, a plot by the Lagman faction to disrupt the APEC meet but Lagman has denied this.

The strikers defied a management order for them to return to work by noon yesterday.

"The strike goes on," said Palea through counsel Arno Sanidad, in the press conference at the union's Pasay office.

Palea turned its ire on the Department of Labor and Employment, with Sanidad calling officials "devils, capable of wheeling, dealing, and horse trading for their personal benefits."

PAL and Palea representatives met until late Thursday at the DOLE office in Intramuros but failed to come up with any agreement.

This prompted Acting Labor Secretary Cresenciano Trajano to order the strikers to return to work by midnight Friday, to save the country from international embarrassment in the light of preparations for the APEC summit.

"To our mind, what transpired was an attempt at a coup d'etat within the department, where Secretary (Leonardo) Quisumbing's position was dependent on his being able to maintain industrial harmony at PAL," Sanidad said in the conference.

He also said there were groups within DOLE playing politics and trying to upstage one another to get the credit for the solution of the PAL problem. One of them, he said, is the group loyal to Quisumbing. Another is that headed by Trajano and allegedly backed by Executive Secretary Ruben Torres.

The strike has resulted in the cancellation of nine international and 47 domestic flights. But some international airlines hardly noticed the protest action as private ground handling services filled posts abandoned by the strikers. Delays in off-loading of baggage of international airlines were down to half-an-hour yesterday, compared to the two- to four-delay the other day.