PAL hiring workers for ground duty

The Philippine Star
By Mary Ann Ll. ReyeS
June 14, 2011 12:00 AM

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine Airlines (PAL) will be hiring workers for ground duty to augment its current workforce and replace those who resigned over the past few weeks.

In a statement, PAL spokesperson Cielo Villaluna said the flag carrier intends to directly hire 60 customer service agents (CSAs) to man check-in counters and perform other ground duties. She said this would replace CSAs who either resigned or were pirated abroad.

“To avoid inconvenience to our passengers in terms of longer queues and waiting times, PAL management started processing applications for customer service agents,” she explained.

Contrary to claims by the PAL Employees Association (PALEA), Villaluna said PAL management would not hire people from MacroAsia Corp. “In fact, the decision to hire directly instead of getting a service provider was even proposed by PALEA officers during a management-union dialogue last week,” she said.

Villaluna explained that the original management proposal was to temporarily engage the services of MacroAsia for six months just to fill the gap. But since the union opposed this, management decided that it would just hire employees directly to end the debate, she stressed.