Inside Philippine politics & beyond

Crippling of Philippine Airlines (PAL) operations by protest belies its claim

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By Raïssa Robles

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.

And PAL had to ground so many flights.

Just wondering.

To read about what happened, click on this link.

 

Comments

  1. They did this before in ’98 with ALPAP and succeeded. And these guys are the PILOTS! The working class of the airline industry! And yet they’re still operational.

    My heart goes out to all those affected, but I’m skeptical about the results.

  2. Very well said Ms Raissa!
    PAL Management is saying that Ground Handling is “non-core”. If that true then how come they pulled out their offices the Admin employees to do our duties (with a pathetic attempt). Does this mean they can leave their positions without affecting the company?
    Who’s really “non-core” now?

  3. You seem to have a rather naive 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 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.”

    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.

      • That is also a very wise business move (hypothetically — it assumes they’ll do it right) on the part of the Tan group. That allows them to generate revenue from operations which, if kept in the airline, would not generate revenue, because they can provide the services to other airlines as well as PAL. Obviously, they already have some experience along those lines with CP Catering.

        Certainly, the whole arrangement is fishy, but I don’t blame PAL for that because they’re just taking advantage of a very poor framework of corporate regulation in this country. Baldoz’ edict that the outsourcing was only allowable if independent contractors were used probably led to the fishy arrangement, because it was out of line — that’s restraint of trade, and the fact that Philippine law allows her that authority to set such a condition on a privately-owned company just points to what is the real root of the problem here as far as the way business is done and labor relations are handled.

        Bottom line is, union-busting is a thing. It happens everywhere, even in countries and systems that are a lot better put together than this one. PALEA’s leadership has been incredibly naive and has taken the wrong approach to dealing with this all along, and it burned them. And no matter how many people shriek and stamp their feet about it now, they’ve obviously lost. If someone wants to draw a lesson of some value from this, perhaps we’d be better off analyzing it for the benefit of other labor groups, so they can avoid making the same stupid mistakes if and when they face similar circumstances.

  5. To add to that, PAL also posted a press release on 24 September saying “PAL reduces flights ahead of spin off/outsourcing; contingency measures up.” (http://www.philippineairlines.com/news/pal_reduces_flights.jsp)

    They even said on that PR that “PAL is adopting contingency measures during the transition period to shield its customers from unnecessary inconvenience and hassles. We’re not taking any chances. These measures will help alleviate the inevitable minor kinks in PAL’s service as we go though this difficult but necessary transition period.”

    They may have plotted contingency plans for Oct onwards, but the turnout of Tuesday’s events just proves that PAL was not ready for such an incident. The bigger question is, haven’t they foreseen such an event to happen considering they’re laying off 2,600 employees?

    • they know the tuesday will happen they did not turn on the respond knob to get peoples sympathy. imagine trappin passegers inside the plane for 4 hours!

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