Philippine Airlines Union officials are killing the goose that lays the golden egg for all PAL employees.

MANILA STANDARD, SEPTEMBER 18, 1998
OPINION
(Column of Emil P. Jurado)

Philippine Airlines Union officials are killing the goose that lays the golden egg for all PAL employees.

After an announcement was made the employees' union accepted an agreement with PAL chairman and majority owner Lucio Tan giving airline workers three board seats and 60,000 PAL shares in exchange for a 10-year suspension of their collective bargaining agreement, the same union turned around and repudiated the accord.

Clearly, the airline union has an agenda all its own. The union does not work for the benefit of PAL workers, whose future is in limbo. Tan may just throw in the towel and say, “enough is enough.”

The airline is under receivership because of its indebtedness. And yet the union backed out from an earlier agreement intended to prevent the airline from going under. It may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

If PAL workers know what's good for them, they should now realize that their union officials are thinking only of themselves.

I heard it from the gravine that Lucio Tan may finally call it quits with PAL since he is already hemorrhaging financially. And, despite Tan's billions, his is not a bottomless pit.