PALEA gets backing of Occupy Protesters

Photo taken in Australia

Photo taken in Japan

Video taken in Canada

Press Release

December 16, 2011

PALEA

Just as truck drivers and longshore workers got the support of Occupy rallyists in the US, the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association (PALEA) received the solidarity of Occupy protesters in Canada. Occupy Toronto activists together with Canadian airline unions held a solidarity action at the Toronto international airport last December 10. Last Tuesday various ports along the West Coast such as Oakland, Los Angeles and Portland were shutdown by community pickets of Occupy protesters with the support of port workers who refused to cross the picketlines. As is the practice in Occupy protests, the Toronto rally was called a “general assembly” and speeches were “echoed” by the participants.

The series of solidarity actions for PALEA continued with a picket at the Tokyo office of Philippine Airlines (PAL) by Japanese railway workers last December 12. On December 14 another rally was held at the Philippine consulate in Melbourne that was attended by PALEA vice president Alnem Pretencio, the head of the two million-strong Australian Council of Trade Unions Geraldine Kearney and leaders of the Australian Services Union which represents airline workers including Qantas, Maritime Union of Australia, Victorian Trades Hall Council and Australia Asia Worker Links.

Gerry Rivera, PALEA president and vice chair of the Partido ng Manggagawa, said that “We salute the Occupy shutdown of the West Coast ports to demand justice for truck drivers and longshore workers. The fight for better pay, job security and union rights is a common struggle of port workers, airline employees and workers around the world. PALEA stands shoulder to shoulder with Occupy protesters.”

The latest series of solidarity actions for PALEA is the second wave after earlier rallies staged in late October to early November in Washington DC, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Renato Magtubo, chair of PM and co-chair of the Church-Labor Conference, declared that “The latest rallies in support of PALEA are a level up from earlier actions since the call for a boycott of Lucio Tan-owned PAL and Air Philippines are explicitly expressed. The widespread boycott campaign will hurt PAL since the regional flights to Australia and Japan, and the transpacific flights to the US are among its most profitable operations.” He added that “The fact that PAL is having a promo during the Christmas peak season belies its claims that its operations are back to normal.”

Rivera claimed that “The convergence between the youth-led Occupy protests and the workers struggles for wages, jobs and rights is a welcome development. Social change will come from the unity and action of the 99%.”

For a video of the Toronto action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV8lFtTCo7Q 

For photos of the Melbourne action: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.283439828375106.80352.100001272721169&type=1&l=94715c3e50 

For photos of the Tokyo action: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.282035501848872.80162.100001272721169&type=1&l=adb20681a6 

http://partidongmanggagawa2001.blogspot.com/2011/12/palea-gets-backing-of-occupy-protesters.html

Labor rights under P-Noy: Large gap between declared policy and implementation

PRESS RELEASE

10 December 2011

A large gap between declared policies and implementation characterize the conduct of the present administration in upholding the constitutional mandate of providing full protection to labor, the labor group Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) said in a statement as the country celebrates the International Human Rights Day.

PM chair Renato Magtubo find the current state of labor rights “very depressing” under the present administration as "P-Noy is all talk but zero achievement in upholding labor rights.” 

Magtubo pointed out that when P-Noy assumed office in July last year, he carried with him a 22-Point Labor & Agenda with a declared policy in promoting employment and upholding labor rights.  The agenda has an an over-arching goal of “investing in our country’s top resource, our human resource, to make us more competitive and employable while promoting industrial peace based on social justice.”  

The labor leader explained that Item No. 3 of the said Agenda aims “to promote not only the constitutionally protected rights of workers but also their right to participate in the policymaking processes”, while Item No. 7 seeks “to align  our country’s labor policies with international treaties and ILO conventions in a sound and realistic manner.” 

Asked Magtubo: “Where is P-Noy now after declaring those big words 17 months ago? Where is P-Noy now after Lucio Tan locked out the 2,600 workers of PAL who were fighting for their constitutionally guaranteed rights?  Where is industrial peace based on social justice? ”

The labor group added that even the recent Conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO) held in Kyoto reminded both businesses and governments to prioritize long-term over short term employment.  The ILO’s Decent Work Framework which promotes equal opportunity and gainful employment was adopted by the Philippine government several years ago.

“Yet P-Noy’s labor secretary Rosalinda Baldoz who was present at the conference and who decided in favour of Lucio Tan in the PAL case, defended the outsourcing and contractualization as a necessary policy,” lamented Magtubo,

The former partylist representative said the PAL issue had become a litmus test to P-Noy and this unresolved issue of social justice will continue to hound his administration whose popularity is mainly bolstered by a populist campaign on anti-corruption.

Source: http://partidongmanggagawa2001.blogspot.com/2011/12/labor-rights-under-p-noy-large-gap.html

December 10, 2011 Solidarity Rally for fired PALEA members in Manila

December 10, 2011 Solidarity Rally for fired PALEA members in Manila

Looking At The PAL-PALEA Dispute through the lens of Industrial Relations and Human Rights

UP School Of Labor And Industrial Relations & The Philippine Human Rights Information Center
Forum on PAL-PALEA Dispute
December 15, 2011 1-5pm at UP SOLAIR

Rally at Pearson Airport on Saturday between12:00-12:45 to support the fired PALEA ground workers who work for PAL in Manila.

BY COMMUNICATOR, ON DECEMBER 8TH, 2011

When:	Back to Calendar »December 10, 2011 @ 12:00 - 12:45
Where:	Terminal 1 Departure Area (Domestic)
Categories:	GENERAL
Tags:	December December 10 PALEA Rally Solidarity YYZ

- A solidarity & peaceful assembly for the workers of PALEA (Philippine Air Lines Employees Association).

Saturday,  December 10  at 1200 – 1245

at the Inukshuk outside of Domestic Departures Terminal 1, YYZ

Philippine Airlines (PAL) is a profitable airline owned by a billionaire who has fired the airline’s entire airport ground staff represented by PALEA and are replacing them with non-unionized contract workers for a third of their salary, working six 8 hour shifts a week.

Right now, over 2600 PALEA members and their families are occupying a portion of MNL airport as well as other airports throughout the Philippines in a bid to fight for their jobs. They are facing horrible persecution by management hired goons and a corrupt government doing  the billionaire of PAL’s bidding.

Their situation has become desperate and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has issued an urgent appeal for airline workers around the world to mobilise solidarity for these brave workers’ struggle:

http://www.itfglobal.org/campaigns/campaigns-3192.cfm

Links contains downloads of handouts, handbills of campaign.

All the major airport Unions (CAW, CUPE and IAMAW) and the Filipino community will be mobilising for this lunchtime event.

Source: http://iamaw2323.ca/ai1ec_event/rally-at-pearson-airport-to-support-the-fired-palea-ground-workers-who-work-for-pal-in-manila/?instance_id=

RELATED Source: http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=f7e7d331a4aa71b0b75950cc6&id=544e8f1b70

This is our fight– PALEA president

from Salimbay Siteblog

PLIGHT SCHEDULE. Gerry Rivera of PALEA discusses their decade-long battle for CBA and now, work reinstatement. Photo courtesy of Ayra Abo-Abo

Speaking before a low turnout of participation from AIT students, the Philippine Airlines Employees Association (PALEA) president Gerry Rivera emphasized on Friday that their row with the legacy carrier has already developed into a broader fight against contractualization in the Philippines.

“Ang laban ng PALEA ay laban ng lahat,” said Rivera whose allies from the union occupied half of the Seminar Room.

Employed in PAL since 1988, he was guest speaker in the AITSC’s first Serious Talk Series.

“Hindi na lang ito tungkol sa issue ng PAL, ang laban namin ay laban din ng next generation which includes you as students.”

PAL has outsourced its call center reservation, airport services, and in-flight catering effective October 1 after a two-year battle with PALEA, resulting to the dismissal of 2,600 employees.

Violation of worker rights

Rivera said their situation reflects the current state of how workers are treated in the country. Their row with PAL allegedly stemmed from the company’s violation of the worker’s right to security of tenure, right to self-organization, and right to collective bargaining negotiations. See statement by Partido ng Manggagawa

“The PALEA is just a name because since June 1998, PAL already started not recognizing [PALEA].”

In 1998, the airline dismissed 5,000 employees due to the Asian Financial Crisis. Rivera said PAL asked for the suspension of collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with PALEA for ten years as the company entered a corporate rehabilitation program. SeeRentrenching workers, don’t repeat PAL mistake

According to BusinessDictionary.com, a CBA is a contract between the management and an employee organization defining the conditions of employment such as wages, holidays, and benefits and procedures in resolving disputes.

“You might be wondering why only PALEA was asked for the suspension of the CBA, until today I don’t know why.”

The union is one of the three employee organizations in PAL. One is for pilots, the other for flight attendants.

Furthermore, according to Rivera, PAL prematurely exited from the rehabilitation program in September 2007, but the suspension of CBA continued beyond the 10-year period in 2008. He noted that the union’s officers, while engaged in an internal conflict agreed to the extension of the CBA moratorium.

‘PAL is not losing money’

While the main argument in the spin-off issue is to save the airline from more losses by reorganizing corporate structure, Rivera cited a number of counterarguments against PAL’s move.

In an Inquirer.net article, PAL cited a P312 million loss in the two previous years from the global recession among other reasons such as fuel prices and competition with low-cost carriers which the company identified as rationale for the current restructuring.

However, PALEA insisted, “PAL’s audited FS for the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2011 show [a $72.5 million or] P3 billion income, and that is after taxes.”

From June to April of the year, PAL accounted a net loss of $10.6 million effected by the Arab Spring, Japanese tsunami, and oil price hikes, according to another Inquirer.net article. See PAL welcomes DoLE ruling allowing spin-off

Lucio Tan’s

Since 2000, PAL has been outsourcing its maintenance and engineering from Lufthansa Technik Philippines. Despite this, Rivera claimed, 60% of Lufthansa Technik is still under Lucio Tan through the logistics company MacroAsia Corporation.

He further suspected, “We have proven this in our research that the service providers coming in now by virtue of the outsourcing program—the Sky Kitchen [and Sky] Logisticsay pag-aari din nila.”

He said 40% of the Sky Kitchen is owned by MacroAsia.

Sky Kitchen Philippines, Sky Logistics Philippines, and SPI Global Holdings were PAL’s target service providers for the catering, airport services, and call center, respectively. Salimbay is yet to confirm whether this was pursued. See PAL back to normal flight operations Thursday

In a SunStar.com.ph article dated September 8, the three service providers allegedly were not registered under the Department of Labor and Employment, violating Department Order 18 Series 2002. See Philippine airlines service providers illegal

The order compelled for the registration of contractors and subcontractors.

PALEA also noted the incapability of these providers and the competency of the union members.

It asserted in a statement, “The service providers do not have the necessary personnel complement to do the job that they [PAL] have contracted for. It is now December and PAL continues to operate at a very low operational level.”

Outsourcing as a global trend

Calling contractualization’s being a global trend a “farce”, Rivera said that a list given by the International Transport Workers Federation claims that a significant number of airlines in the Asia-Pacific are still provided by their own manpower.

He suspected that cabin crew would follow suit in the outsourcing scheme.

According to Salimbay’s source, the compensation package for the employees is above industry average. Rivera said that the actual rate ranges from half to a million.

But despite the sum, only one-fifth of the 2,600 chose to get their compensation, according to Rivera. PALEA would insist in their reinstatement even if this means spending Christmas in their protest camps.

“We would like our children na sana maranasan pa ang regular,” said Rivera.

See Partido ng Mangagawa’s version of the PAL-PALEA dispute chronology

Waking up to a braver world

By Desiree T. Tan, JA G. de Lima on December 4, 2011 in Beyond Loyola

Photo by James M. Magalong

Out on the streets, various groups—the youth, the unemployed, the debt-ridden, the middle class—are relentlessly fighting for equality, better lives, more stable futures. Together they confront a faceless enemy: capitalism.

THE VOICE of Karl Marx echoes on streets and tent cities around the world. In London, people have been camping outside St. Paul’s Cathedral to the dismay of bishops since October 15. In Toronto, participants are enduring a long winter season in tent encampments. Last November 2, in one of the biggest protests to date, demonstrators shut down the whole port district of Oakland, California. And last November 17, in occasion of the movement’s second month, a police-estimated crowd of 30,000 protesters gathered in Foley Square and Brooklyn Bridge in New York, injecting fresh energy into the global phenomenon right at its birthplace.

Similar demonstrations continue to take place in hundreds of cities across the world. Led by individuals leading entirely different lives, the protesters stand up for the same causes, particularly economic inequality and corporate greed. This marks the beginning of a global revolution of ordinary people who are no longer willing to tolerate an unregulated capitalist system.

It has become a global occupation.

“I have had enough”

Four words sum up the cries the protesters have been tirelessly voicing: “I have had enough.”

The protesters, particularly in the Western countries, claim to belong to the “99%.” “We are the 99%” is a political slogan asserting that the majority of the world’s resources and power are held only by the wealthiest 1%, comprised by the very few who run corporations and financial institutions.

Indeed, the effects of a global capitalist system have manifested in diverse ways: a debt crisis in the Eurozone, the late-2000s subprime mortgage crisis in the United States, and an unending global oil crisis, to name a few.

In the Philippines, grievances over the elite-dominated system are as grave, from the layoff of thousands of Philippine Airlines employees to the continued obstruction of land redistribution to the farmers.

Benjie Velasco, an official of Partido ng Manggagawa, says, “The protest camps of Palea (Philippine Airlines’ Employees Association) in Manila and Cebu are testament to the common struggle [Palea shares] with the workers of US, Europe, and the world.”

“Ang laban ng Palea ay laban ng lahat (The fight of Palea is the fight of everyone),” he says.

21st century activism

True democracy and economic equality are the battle cries of the Occupy activists. The state of the world today points to the lack of genuine social change from non-profit organizations and social responsibility programs. For the activists, this demands no less than taking it to the streets.

As of this moment, the movement is growing faster and stronger. Its collective power is made up of the protesters’ individual stories of how they have become victims of an unjust system. They will not be packing up anytime soon; each one inspires another to speak up, allowing the ripples of anger to transform into waves of change.

Some Filipino activists have echoed the Wall Street protests by staging a rally last October 15 in front of the US Embassy, and more demonstrations are being planned for December.

No one knows when this will end, or whether this will generate clear outcomes. With thousands willing to sacrifice working and school hours—braving the harsh winter and threats of arrest—this is the clearest sign of an impending war against what the 99% assert to be a cruel economy.

According to Political Science Department instructor Carmel Abao, even though it seems for now that the protesters are ineffective in influencing government policy, they will prove effective in “exposing the ills of the dominant political-economic system.”

Marx’s dream

Many criticisms have been raised regarding the value of the demonstrations. One apparent weakness of the Occupy protests is that it is not clear what they are fighting for, given the diversity of the protesters’ grievances.

Jayeel Cornelio, PhD, a sociologist and an instructor with the Development Studies Program, says, “You talk to a hundred people, you gather a hundred different responses—that’s what will happen, precisely because [the protesters] are not systematically organized.”

At the very least, the movement has become an arena showcasing overwhelming feats of social cooperation and perseverance. From an improvised book-lending facility to a soup kitchen offering free meals in the movement’s New York base, strangers are helping other strangers—a phenomenon rarely seen in such a huge scale in ordinary circumstances.

The different Occupy camps may not have clear, coherent demands just yet, but the well-organized and peaceful makeshift camps, which function almost like independent, self-sustaining cities, are already powerful statements in themselves.

The solidarity within the camps show a considerable grassroots unity, which could later transform into force advocating socialism, promoting a society where resources are shared, in the way envisioned by philosopher and economist Karl Marx.

A global consciousness

While they have literally occupied banks and financial districts, the movement still has a long way to go to truly transform the global capitalist system. Nevertheless, they have raised self-awareness among the elite and optimism among the working class.

The global Occupy movement “raises a consciousness that the capitalist system cannot go on doing business as usual,” says Cornelio. “[But] whether they can change is still something we have yet to see.”

The protests show that existing social conditions have turned out to be oppressive and destructive for most people, while uplifting and benefiting only a select few. Indeed, the last lines of The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, now seem more relevant than ever: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

http://www.theguidon.com/1112/main/2011/12/waking-up-to-a-braver-world/#.Tt1AMioo_yo.facebook

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