Scholarship News

Manila, Philippines (AHN) – Philippine Airlines fought back on Thursday against a massive rally of workers at the nation’s business district protesting the carrier’s plan to lay off thousands of employees in a restructuring program.

“It cannot be business as usual: the global economic crisis of 2008 showed that airlines are in real danger of closure or bankruptcy without restructuring,” PAL spokesperson Cielo Villaluna said in a statement.

The airline announced last month it would outsource its airport services, call center and in-flight catering businesses. It is working on raising severance packages costing 2.5 billion pesos ($58.6 billion) to 2,600 employees, following the Labor Department’s decision allowing it to restructure its operations.

The PAL Employees Association had threatened to strike in response to the “contractualization” of workers by the carrier.

“PAL employees should not pay for PAL’s financial crisis since we did not cause it,” the group’s president, Gerry Rivera, has said. “Moreover the retrenchment will reduce PAL’s losses by an insignificant 7 percent. The real reason for the mass layoff is not to save PAL but to bust the union and replace regular jobs with contractual workers.”

Villaluna, however, insisted the restructuring is not contractualization. “Affected employees will be retired early and paid their separation benefits in accordance with the ruling of the Department of Labor and Employment. It’s entirely up to them [workers] if they want to join the new service providers or not,” she said the same day PALEA and other unions gathered in protest in Makati.

Asia’s first airline, PAL began its cost-cutting measures early this year to recoup losses from the global recession and continued weak performance of the airline industry worldwide. It prevented a cabin crew strike in September with the intervention of the government.

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