People in Distress

Philippine Star

Tuesday, November 5, 1996

Jaywalker

By ART D. BORJAL

For thousands of passengers of the Philippine Airlines last Wednesday, time also stood still. I was among about a thousand people who spent almost five hours in the Manila Domestic Airport's terminal building as we waited for the PAL flights that never took off. Five hours doing nothing — what a way to waste time and money.

I was flabbergasted over the mind-set of the PAL strikers. Since a strike is almost always aimed at winning public sympathy, why did the PALmen declare a strike aimed at making life miserable for the passengers? Note that the PALmen walked out of their jobs at six o'clock in the evening, before five scheduled domestic flights could take off. Couldn't the strikers have allowed the flights to take off first before declaring their wildcat strike? Apparently, they wanted to inconvenience the riding public.

It would be hard to quantify the time and money lost by the stranded passengers. They must have gone through a lot of hassle returning to their homes, rescheduling their aborted or connecting flights, looking for a temporary place to stay in, rearranging their schedules with the parties in their respective destinations. What a cruel way to disrupt the lives of countless human beings.