PAL confirms it's to take off again

PAL confirms it's to take off again

MANILA (AP): Philippine Airlines publicly announced Sunday it was reopening after forging a no-strike deal with its largest union, though militant workers vowed to continue opposing the deal.

In several paid newspaper advertisements, PAL said it would offer 14 round-trip domestic flights from Manila starting on Wednesday and apologized to the public for problems caused by its shutdown last month.

"Your national flag carrier is back," PAL said.

PAL officials have said at least 2,000 workers will be recalled to handle domestic operations, and most of the airline's 8,600 current workers will be recalled once international flights resume in a few weeks.

The debt-ridden airline, Asia's oldest, closed on Sept. 23 after failing to persuade its ground crew union to accept a management-proposed recovery plan that would suspend its workers' right to strike and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement for 10 years.

Its closure left much of the Philippine archipelago without air service, prompting President Joseph Estrada to enlist Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific to fly PAL's domestic routes to avoid serious damage to the economy.

In a second government-supervised referendum held Friday, about 61 percent of the 6,700 members of PAL's largest union accepted the proposal to suspend collective bargaining in exchange for 20 percent of the company's stock and seats on its board.

Militant members of the union, however, said they would seek court action on Monday to declare the agreement illegal and would continue protests against it.

"This agreement would set a precedent and lead to the downfall not only of PAL workers," said Renato Reyes, a union board member opposed to the proposal.

He said the PAL recovery plan violates the Philippine constitution, which guarantees the right of workers to form unions and bargain collectively for labor benefits.

Estrada assured the workers that he will defend their rights during the proposed 10-year collective bargaining suspension, adding it is only a temporary measure to help PAL and the Manila government cope with the Asian crisis.

Asia's currency crisis hit last year shortly after PAL launched a US$4 billion modernization program, greatly inflating the amount of money it must repay to overseas creditors. It has been unable to make payments on $2.1 billion of debt.