The PALEA claims that PAL hired the goons that attacked its protest camp site. PAL claims that they had nothing to do with the goons. Perhaps it could have been PALEA that brought in the goons to make it appear that PAL was getting brutal, violent and had abandoned any sense of right and decency.

In this case, the PALEA is clearly a victim. Its protest camp site was destroyed. Any effort of PAL, such as to allow the protest camp to continue and to restore the destroyed tents of the PALEA people, has no more weight. The fact stands, in the eyes of all the people, that PALEA was victimized. But it is also a fact that PALEA, in the broader scheme of things has continued to be victim for over a long, long time and had been unable to do anything about it.

Any union naturally stands to benefit from the company its members provide service to. The labor organization that it is affiliated with will take measures for its welfare each time there is a gap between the employees and the employers, in this case PALEA and PAL.

For a long time, the PAL Employees Association (PALEA) has been affiliated with the Partido Manggagawa (PM), the Kilusang Mayo Uno breakaway group Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) and its fairly new Sanlakas sectoral party (SP) as well as the now famous FASAP – Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines.  Not a very nice sounding acronym, mind you.

Considering that PAL was once a government organization, it took a lot of time and effort before PM-BMP was able to recruit the PALEA into its wing. However, for any labor federation, the PALEA is clearly a valuable member, a prize catch.

Few other labor unions affiliated with the PM-BMP would be able to match the value of an airline employees’ union such as PALEA.

The question is, are the PALEA members fortunate to be under the wings of the PM-BMP? The answer is no. And to extrapolate, never.

The reasons are too many and the grounds for malcontent and dissatisfaction on the part of PALEA members are too hefty.

Thus the problem: why did the PAL employees ever allow themselves to be unionized by these people?

A large number of labor disputes entered into by the forerunner of PM-BMP, the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), have forced the unions’ companies to close.

Take the case of industries that used to line the horizon of the Province of Laguna. A good number of them closed down – in tears and some in blood. Similar cases of closure due to the breakdown of industrial relations and industrial peace happened in the entire Calabarzon Region. Some of the embers of these disputes are still burning in the region. Company executives are targeted in assassinations by the New People’s Army.

If you ask the people who worked in those production companies that were forced to close down, the prominent face that shows up in the courts and negotiations, and leads the filing of arbitration proceedings at the National Labor Relations Council, belongs to a priest. A priest! Perhaps a real warrior priest.

At least in the case of PALEA’s upline, the counterpart of an archbishop, founder of the PM and molder of the BMP, was a lay man although he had every right to preach. Because the late Ka Popoy of Partido Manggagawa fame was truly an ideologue while a pragmatist.

The late Ka Popoy fancied himself to be like a Filipino Lenin. Vanguard of Workers. Indeed he was, and like Lenin, he believed that the struggle for the cause must necessitate the recruitment of both real vanguards as well as hoodlums. (He called them “scoundrels”. Lenin was always quick to defend his hoodlums saying that it was alright to have scoundrels as long as they are “our scoundrels.”)

The problem with having a really pragmatic labor federation leadership is that a small union like PALEA, however valuable, will just then be a small speck of sand in the large beach.

When the leadership decides to settle for crumbs (about ten to twenty million reasons for doing so) as it had done in the past, or something bigger than crumbs, the small unions like PALEA will be a sacrificial lamb.

Perhaps the leaders of the small union will be gifted with multiple reasons as incentives by the labor federation too. Who knows? But in the end, the entire organization will suffer.

And so for the last many years the PALEA has not been able to achieve its desired CBA with its employer. Certainly, there ought to be a thing such as delicadeza in the dealings between the union, the federation and the employer. But that is not the case. If there were a Code of Labor Law that protects a small union like PALEA from ever becoming victim to illicit trade and collusion between the employer and the federation or even a minority of the PALEA organization, perhaps delicadeza may no longer be needed.

For all the benefit an airline worker could get from an employer like PAL, it is such an intriguing question why he, she or they would allow themselves to be at the receiving end of people who run organizations like the Partido Manggagawa-Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino.

If the PALEA members will ever visit Freedom Village in Quezon City, a subdivision built on the estate of the family of Justice Kalaw, many houses in that subdivision used to be occupied by the PM-BMP. Not very legally.

The leaders of the PM-BMP had a huge business inside the subdivision and someone named Yolanda Ricaforte somewhat acted as if she was their boss, instead of the leaders of PM-BMP.

Ms. Ricaforte had every right to hold and scold the PM-BMP people in a commanding manner, she was the then Pres. Estrada’s in charge of the accounting of collections from all over the country of the grease from illegal numbers games and God knows what other illegal activities.

Daily, sacks of money arrived at Freedom Village and were sorted, stacked and accounted for by Ms. Ricaforte.

Each time the real owners of the subdivision made attempts to occupy the village, the armed goons of PM-BMP will face the security forces and simply tell them to piss off and that they were under the protection of no less than the President of the Republic of the Philippines himself.

So the counting, sorting and accounting of the money from illegal acts by Ms. Ricaforte and her army of currency specialists, protected by the scoundrels of PM-BMP went on in fairly peaceful surroundings – only occasionally marred by the damned real owners of the village.

While the PALEA is such a cute little member of the PM-BMP, it cannot interfere in the broader context of the very committed and real-life, practical struggles of its labor federation whatever kind of struggle that is.

And here I pause to consider, how did Ms. Winnie Monsod of the Mareng Winnie-Kuyang Oca Orbos fame ever get herself entangled with PALEA-PM-BMP given the kind of context we described above?  Hmmm… just wondering.

At the end of the day, since PALEA cannot cut itself off from the labor federation, it will needlessly be offering itself as the bait for more truly practical and committed, real-life battles of PM-BMP and SANLAKAS for which multiple reasons will allow it as the labor federation to either continue the protest or hold the struggle in abeyance. Huh?

So then, it shall therefore prepare itself to be swallowed one of these days and churned. Unless it can imagine or invent a much better salve for its predicament.

The unified political opposition and the so-called EDSA III (and EDSA IV) forces agreed to create intense civil disturbance in order to finally achieve the goal of ousting President GMA from power and prevent the charter change efforts of the administration from becoming a reality.

The Cory AQUINO group are convincing Hon. Benjamin ABALOS, COMELEC Commissioner, to witness against H.E.  PGMA on electoral fraud in the last elections.  Allegedly, another COMELEC Commissioner is also being targeted by the destabilization forces in the political opposition.

The opposition are strongly making it appear, both domestically and internationally, that the citizenry have come out to impeach H.E.  PGMA.

In relation to the impeachment issue, Mayor Jose Victor G. EJERCITO @JV, TEDDY CASIÑO, and CRISPIN BELTRAN forged an alleged project with CPP/NPNNDFP to assassinate administration congressmen (or senators) that will come out in favor of CHA-CHA.

On the other hand, another Cory AQUINO group, the ONE VOICE was formed to kill the cha-cha movement and recruit more adherents to the Oust GMA campaign.