PAL workers intensify protest actions

PAL workers intensify protest actions

By October 1, regular PAL workers are under threat of being locked out of PAL, as the Lucio Tan Group of companies would start its outsourcing plan in earnest.
By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — While typhoon Pedring was ravaging the Philippines last Tuesday, a combined force of the Philippine National Police, Manila International Airport Authority and Philippine Air Lines security guards unleashed their strength on the protesting workers of PAL, as they dispersed and bodily dragged off the airline premises hundreds of these PAL workers.

In the nearby OLAP (Our Lady of Airways Parish) chapel where some workers and supporters gathered in the afternoon, the police also reportedly barricaded its premises and threatened the workers congregating inside, prompting the parish priest to come out and remind the police that “it is the workers’ right to conduct rallies and express themselves, and the police have no right to interfere inside the church.”

In Cebu, members of the now 65-year-old Philippine Airlines Employees Association (PALEA) also held a picket last Tuesday.

As of this report, PALEA members are still conducting various kinds of protests in the vicinity of the airport. Meanwhile, the management of PAL and President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino who arrived from Japan last night were threatening protesters with legal cases for having conducted a mass action last Tuesday. The said protest was blamed by PAL management for the cancellation of domestic and international flights at the height of typhoon Pedring.

But some flights remained cancelled on Wednesday even if the protesters had been bodily hauled off the airline premises by the police. Sources from plane cabin crews noted that the cancellations and the confusion that resulted in passengers being told to shuttle from one place to another were caused by still untrained new workers brought in by Lucio Tan Group’s MacroAsia.

Last Tuesday’s protest and the ongoing pockets of protests this week erupted from a series of commotions in the airport involving PAL regular workers refusing to give up their jobs or work with “non-PAL workers” brought in by Tan’s Macro Asia. Unionists’ postings in their Facebook also revealed that tensions are rising in the airport as employees continue to defy PAL’s outsourcing plan while management gears to lock the workers out by the end of this month.

It appears that Tan’s MacroAsia is shaping up as the third-party service provider who would take over the soon-to-be outsourced departments of PAL.

Implementation of questionable outsourcing plan

Since two years ago, members of PALEA had expressed hopes that their infamous 10-year CBA moratorium was finally over and that they could start negotiating a new CBA. They said all indications pointed to PAL having successfully bounced back from its crisis. But as it turned out, most PALEA members found themselves threatened instead.

Members told bulatlat.com that instead of a thank you for their decade-long sacrifice, the PAL management is seeking to retrench them (at least 2,600 workers of the 3,700-plus union) via a so-called outsourcing scheme.

The workers condemned the scheme as just a contractualization and union-busting plan in disguise. The labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno said it is geared only for Lucio Tan’s increased “profiteering,” and not because of business exigencies as “incurring losses.” But the labor department and then the office of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III still ignored these and approved the Lucio Tan Group’s outsourcing plan.... MORE
Source:  Bulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/09/29/pal-workers-intensify-protest-actions/