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PAL workers union files notice of strike
October 9, 2015 9:11 pm
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The Philippine Airlines Employees Association (PALEA), the union of ground employees at Philippine Airlines (PAL), filed a notice of strike on Thursday citing unfair labor practices.
Under the law, PALEA has 15 days before it can actually stage a strike after filing a notice of strike.
Gerry Rivera, PALEA president and vice chairman of Partido Manggagawa (PM), said, “We ask for the understanding of the public but a strike is necessary to defend the working conditions of PAL workers as the company is illegally interfering and coercing employees in the exercise of their constitutional right to self-organization.”
He added: “Also, the mass termination of more than 100 PALEA members constitute another element of unfair labor practice.”
On September 2, PAL sent notices of termination to 117 employees, almost all PALEA members. The notice cited an alleged organizational restructuring which had rendered “several positions in the company redundant.”
In a sign of renewed turbulence at PAL, last Wednesday several hundred members of PALEA, PM and labor center Sentro marched in Ayala, Makati under the banner of labor group coalition Nagkaisa to call for job security and a living wage in commemoration of World Decent Work Day.
A highlight of the protest was a noisy but peaceful picket at the PAL ticketing office at Allied BankBuilding in Ayala to call for a boycott of the airline until the various labor disputes between PALEA and PAL are resolved.
“Yet no redundancy will happen since the workers to be retrenched will be replaced by new employees from agencies. The new round of layoffs is another wave of contractualization, changing regular unionized workers with contractual employees using agencies who will be paid less in wages and benefits,” Rivera said.
He added that PAL is laying off workers “at a time when it is swimming in profits. PAL’s parent company, PAL Holdings, reported a net income of P5.8 billion ($126.20 million) for the first half of 2015, soaring nearly ten-fold from P560 million ($12.18 million) during the same period last year.”
Rivera continued, “While the notice states that the termination shall be effective on November 9, most of the employees who were notified were dismissed immediately upon being served. They were no longer allowed to work as soon as they had been given the notice. Contractual employees with security escorts were already on standby and immediately replaced the terminated employees.”
PALEA sent a letter on September 5 to PAL president and COO Jaime Bautista to ask for the recall of the mass layoff.
In the same letter, PALEA also repeated its request for the commencement of collective bargainingnegotiations, and the resumption of discussions for the implementation of the settlement agreement.
“To date, PAL has not replied to any of these letters. In the face of such intransigence, a strike becomes imperative,” Rivera said.
No collective bargaining negotiation between PAL and PALEA has happened since 1998 when a 10-year CBA suspension was imposed. After a two-year campaign, PALEA and PAL forged a deal to settle the labor dispute of 2011, yet some 600 retrenched members have not been re-employed as provided for in the agreement.
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