PAL says flights remain normal

INQUIRER.net
First Posted 17:36:00 12/10/2010

MANILA, Philippines—Philippine Airlines said Friday that all PAL flights were “normal and continue to operate according to published schedules.”

PAL made the assurance in the wake of the announcement of the results of the strike vote conducted by the PAL Employees Association (Palea) showing that 86 percent of the voting union members favored to stage a strike.

“PAL would like to assure the public the airline is doing all it can to prevent any flight disruptions,” the airline said in a statement.

It said that “in the unlikely event of a work stoppage,” PAL has put the following contingency measures in place:

1.) Hiring of professional service providers, including inflight catering companies, to augment workers not joining the strike;

2.) Deployment of all available manpower, including supervisors and managers, that is more than capable of manning critical frontline posts;

3.) Endorsement of affected passengers to its sister airline, AirPhilexpress, as well as 134 international airline partners.

PAL said employees who participated in the December 7 strike vote were ground workers mostly assigned at the ground-handling, catering and call-center offices.

“While their jobs are important, these workers play support to flight operations. They are not directly engaged in flying or maintaining the aircraft. The pilots, cabin crew and mechanics/maintenance workers of Lufthansa Technik Philippines are not part of the planned work stoppage,” PAL said.
The PAL-Palea labor dispute is currently being reviewed by Malacanang. PAL hopes the union will heed Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa's appeal to exercise restraint by deferring any mass action at this time and allow the Palace to decide on the case,” it added.

PAL also said legal avenues could still be exhausted in resolving the management-labor differences