Aquino’s Assumption of Jurisdiction Over PAL Dispute: A Christmas Gift to Workers or a Delaying Tactic?

Aquino’s Assumption of Jurisdiction Over PAL Dispute: A Christmas Gift to Workers or a Delaying Tactic?

“The real test of whether Aquino’s assumption of jurisdiction order is pro-worker or pro-Lucio Tan lies in his future decision on Tan’s contractualization through mass layoffs and outsourcing scheme,” said Joselito Ustarez, vice-chairman of KMU.
By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Thousands of ground crew employees of the Philippine Airlines (PAL) “will have a merry Christmas since no retrenchment will happen this holiday season,” said Gerry Rivera, president of PAL Employees Association (PALEA), after President Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino assumed jurisdiction last Dec 16 of PALEA’s pending strike. The assumption of jurisdiction (AJ) order, a power vested on the labor secretary and the country’s president, enjoined both parties (PAL and PALEA) to withhold their planned actions until Aquino comes up with an official resolution addressing the conflicting issues of the workers and PAL management.

Up for Aquino’s review is the contentious matter of PAL’s planned spinoff and outsourcing, which, when implemented, would result in the termination of nearly 3,000 regular employees and their transformation into lower-paid non-unionized contractual workers. PAL president Jaime Bautista has insisted that after the mass layoff, PAL would “outsource” the jobs of inflight catering, aircraft maintenance and ticketing services to three supposed third party service providers: SkyLogistics Philippines Inc., SkyKitchen Philippines Inc. and ePLDT Ventus.

But PALEA and the Anakpawis Partylist chapter in PAL have repeatedly belied such claims, saying PAL only plans to transfer its workers to the Lucio Tan Group’s dummy companies to slash their wages, bust their union and make the CBA suspension permanent. In fact, an exhaustive paper trail investigation of writer Raissa Robles has recently confirmed in detail that SkyLogistics and SkyKitchen are indeed dummy companies, if not outrightly under Lucio Tan’s MacroAsia Corporation.

Thus, Aquino’s review may likely find out that a big factor cited by PAL in its planned spin-off/outsourcing and DOLE’s approval of it appears to be without basis. For now though, the dispute has been a year-long exchange of saber-rattling between the management and the workers’ union. The recent AJ is already the second of such order issued for the same dispute this year alone..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2010/12/18/aquino%E2%80%99s-assumption-of-jurisdiction-over-pal-dispute-a-christmas-gift-to-workers-or-a-delaying-tactic/