September 30, 2011
By BenK
I have been following the bizarre drama of Philippine Airlines, “the
world’s most entertaining air carrier”, for nearly a year as it has
struggled mightily – and at times, comically so – towards implementing
an outsourcing plan which PAL hopes will turn its financial fortunes
around. The sticking point throughout the whole sorry saga has been the
resistance of the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association (PALEA),
which represents the 2,600 catering, reservations, and ground service
workers who have been made redundant by the plan of PAL to divest itself
of those three business units.
On Tuesday, with Manila and most of the rest of Luzon already dealing with
being pounded by Typhoon Pedring, the PAL-PALEA dispute came to an ugly
head when 300 or so PALEA employees staged an all-day “work stoppage”
at NAIA, forcing PAL to suspend all operations and stranding, according to
an airline spokesperson, about 14,000 passengers. The wildcat strike,
which was patently illegal according to Philippine labor law and
presumably punishable under the terms of the Civil Aviation Act of 2008
has sparked the predictable debate online, much of it rather idiotic if
the examples strained from the Net and posted by Paul Farol over at Pinoy
Buzz yesterday are any indication, including this gem he dug out of Raissa
Robles’ blog:
Meanwhile, in the blogosphere, blogger and Journalist Raissa Robles
needles PAL over an apparent attempt to mislead people with semantics,
specifically with the word “non-core personnel”:
I can’t help but notice that a sit-down protest held by PAL’s
ground employees yesterday totally paralyzed company operations and
caused 14,000 passengers to miss their flights.
Didn’t PAL keep saying – to justify the sacking of several
thousand employees – that what they were out-sourcing were
“non-core” activities?
“Non-core” would mean that these activities are not that vital to
their day-to-day operations, right?
And yet when these “non-core” personnel struck yesterday, company
operations were turned into total chaos.
Robles then leaves a link to a previous article where she underscores
her abilities as an investigative journalist. Robles essentially tries
to contextualize PALEA’s strike, somewhat suggesting it is a
justifiable recourse despite what the Civil Aviation Act of 2008 says.
So, Ms. Raissa is an investigative journalist. Good for her. I am, among
other things, a consultant and analyst of the airline industry, and
coincidentally happen to be working right now with a sizeable Middle
Eastern carrier on various issues concerning its own outsourcing plan. So
I have the privilege of drawing on a bit more specific knowledge than she
can when I commented on her brief and sarcastic post with:
You seem to have a rather naïve understanding of what a “core
employee” is to an airline. The “core task” as far as any
airline is concerned is moving paying passengers from one point to
another by means of an aircraft. That requires flight crews to operate
the aircraft, and cabin crews to maintain passenger safety. Everything
and everybody else is “non-core”. Essential for efficiency and
productivity, yes, but not necessarily something the airline needs to
provide itself, if useful alternatives (such as contractors) are
reliably available.
Outsourcing is the way of the world in the airline industry, it’s
sensible business. Personally, I’m skeptical of PAL’s ability to
manage tying their own shoes correctly, but I’ll tell you what,
I’d think even less of them from a business perspective if they
didn’t do this spin-off. PALEA has had more than a year to come to
terms with this, and they have consistently picked the most idiotic
and counter-productive choice [of how to respond] every time they’ve
had a chance.
Could PAL have handled the situation on Tuesday better? Probably. But
if I’m a suddenly-stranded passenger, already dealing with a typhoon
and faced with some planking jackass at the check-in counter
preventing me from getting on my flight home, or to the job overseas I
need to send my kids to school, I’m not going to blame the
abstraction of PAL management. I’m going to blame the fool in front
of me who’s visibly ruining my day, and the group represented by the
name PALEA on the sign he’s carrying. And I’m not going to be
particularly convinced of his argument that job security is his
“right.”
[PALEA President] Gerry Rivera should have thought of how this would
really play to the public, but he’s been so out of touch with
reality all through this saga that it would have been a real surprise
for him to get a clue now.
And therein lies the rub. For all its faults – and it has more than I
can count – for all its history of bad relations with its labor unions,
and whatever its real motives are, PAL has at least proceeded in line with
the basic core goal of keeping its planes in the air and keeping people on
the move. Yes, it does a terrible job at it, and there are much better
alternatives for the consumer even in this limited air transport market.
Nonetheless, the inescapable conclusion is that, however small the
added-value PAL’s existence may actually be, it does, perhaps in spite
of itself, provide a public service.
PALEA does not. PALEA provides a service for, at this point, roughly 300
malcontents out of about 2,600 people, the rest of whom, while
understandably not exactly thrilled with the new arrangements and probably
rightly concerned about their prospects in an uncertain job market, took
what they could get out of an inevitable situation and moved on.
The President characterized the “labor action” on Tuesday as
“economic sabotage” and for once he’s actually right about
something. PALEA is conducting an assault on the Filipino people, and
it’s actually a three-pronged attack. First, there was the incredible
confusion and inconvenience caused by forcing PAL to ground on Tuesday.
Many of the affected passengers were probably only inconvenienced – but
does PALEA know how many may have missed being somewhere really important,
and will suffer serious consequences as a result? Second, PALEA’s action
damaged the image and reputation of the country. PAL is the only airline
that carries the country’s name to other places (Air Philippines, which
only has limited and usually code-shared service to Singapore and Hong
Kong, doesn’t count), and while whatever ire an international traveler
might feel when learning he can’t board his flight to Manila is of
course probably going to be directed at the airline, he wouldn’t be
feeling that ire for that particular reason if it were not for PALEA’s
planking jackasses in NAIA.
And finally, PALEA’s antics harm the cause of every other labor
organization in the country. The Philippines is not a good atmosphere for
organized labor in the first place, which is unfortunate because at this
stage of the country’s development many workers do need the protection a
union can provide. By behaving in an irresponsible way and making the
public the bearer of the consequences of their actions, PALEA risks
hardening public opinion against unions in general, and as public opinion
goes, so go the opinions of legislators who keep their jobs by reacting to
it without looking into circumstances too deeply or objectively.
Economic sabotage? PALEA is lucky they’re in the Philippines. A country
with less of a sense of humor might consider it something a lot worse.
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