Employees in the airlines’ three departments – contact center operations, airport services and inflight catering – are expected to be absorbed by PAL’s partner service providers. By trimming its workforce to just over 4,000 from its current 7,000, the company expects to make major savings in monthly salary costs. Three hundred contact center workers – who handle reservations and bookings via phone, email, fax transmissions for all PAL flights will be outsourced. In a June 15 decision, the Department of Labour and Employment said that the intended closure of Philippine Airlines’ airport services, in-flight catering, and call center reservation operations, the employment severance of its workers, and the contracting out of these operations to the named service providers are based on lawful ground.
Philippine Airlines has asked government to rule on an appeal filed by workers who are contesting the company’s plan to outsource 2,600 jobs. This was announced by PAL president Jaime Bautista early evening of Thursday, four hours after it met with government mediators and representatives of the PAL Employees Association (PALEA) at the National Mediation and Conciliation Board (NCMB) office in Manila. PAL have asked DOLEt to decide on the merits of the case. And they are requesting that they make a decision based on submitted documents. Management…shall await the resolution of the Motion for Reconsideration, without prejudice to further consultation should any significant development arises or an offer from the union is communicated to management.
The union further said that it further manifests that PAL is in the better position to offer by scrapping the termination of the +/- 2,600 employees. Philippine Airlines (PAL) has no plan to rehire its retrenched workers, PAL President Jaime Bautista said in an interview, Thursday after its conciliation meeting organized by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). Bautista made the statement amid the accusations of the Philippine Airline Employees Association (PALEA) that it is merely changing the status of its regular employees to contractual to avoid giving their due benefits. Bautista said that they are in a crisis, and need to retrench some of our workers in order for PAL to survive.