PAL crisis

[diatabz]

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Asian customers don't like to be served by old, unattractive women, that's why there are no old or ugly stewardess in Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines.

Uhh I don't know about ugly, but CX and SQ have numerous FA's over 40. My sister's been with CX since 86, and she's well into her 40's. She's not even the most senior FA-at least not yet. lol

The fact here is that PAL's shameful management practices have finally caught up with them. The pilots, the flight attendants, I guess they've had it with the company.

[Golden Thief Bug]

mag cebu pac nalang ta! nindot pa byahe ug atmosphere inside the plane

[RMK711]

Uhh I don't know about ugly, but CX and SQ have numerous FA's over 40. My sister's been with CX since 86, and she's well into her 40's. She's not even the most senior FA-at least not yet. lol

The fact here is that PAL's shameful management practices have finally caught up with them. The pilots, the flight attendants, I guess they've had it with the company.

I fly CX all the time and I've never seen a FA older than mid-fortys throughout all classes. Read this too:

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.

Cathay Pacific, like most Asian airlines, Singapore Airlines included, have a young mandatory retirement age. It's unfair to single out PAL when their competitors are doing the exact same thing.

Pero ingon ani gihapon, kung manira ang PAL wurag kani ra gihapon sila ang mag-lisud dili ang tag-iya. Di ko kasabot sa mga tao nga ingon ana, dili ganahan sa management pero mohawid gihapon sa trabaho. Mangita nalang unta sila og lain. Unsa may gusto nila, nga sila ang mo-manage sa kompanya? Aw.. sugod nalang silag ilaha

Mao ning problema diri sa pilipinas, mo-side dayun sa mga emplyado.. communista kaayo ug huna-huna wa lang jud gi-tanaw ang side sa mangement. Insider mo sa PAL? Dili lang ta mag-pataka og storya kay wa ta kahibalo sa tibuok storya ani kai daghan raba jud tapulan diri nga magsige lang og reklamo bahin sa trabaho pero dili maninguha nga maka-ginansya ang kompanya. Ang PAL losing ba o earning? Inya mag-welga welga pa gihapon. Mga oplok jud...

[peewee_toot]

^^hehehe. daghana nanga igo ana sir oi.

[brandnewbien]

samot nag mga tapolan ug mga cge lng ug reklamo. sos daghan jud igo ana dri sa politics and current events section. haha

[peewee_toot]

^^ok ra ng mo reklamo but naay gi buhat after. unsa-on na lng ng kutob ra sa reklamo but walay gibuhat?

[sharkey360]

The Department of Labor and Employment will start on Tuesday the marathon hearings aimed at preventing a strike that can potentially cripple the country's flag carrier, Philippine Airlines (PAL).

Radio dzBB's Carlo Mateo reported on Monday DOLE Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz is determined to have all concerned parties in the PAL row resolve the issue.

Baldoz said she expects to talk to both PAL management and the Flight Attendants' and Stewards' Association of the Philippines (FASAP).

On Thursday, FASAP lodged a notice of strike before the Labor Department, citing the alleged discriminatory policies of the airline.

FASAP, representing 1,600 PAL flight attendants, particularly scored the mandatory retirement age of 40.

However, PAL said the condition had been part of their collective bargaining agreement since 2000.

DOLE to start marathon hearings on PAL row - Nation - GMANews.TV - Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs - Latest Philippine News

[sharkey360]

A columnist expressed this...

THE FIRST time I saw it was maybe 15 years ago, at an American Airlines flight. The fellow was a steward, uniformed like the others, trim like the others, capable like the others. With one exception. His hair was gray, his skin was blotched, and his face bore wrinkles. I figured he must be in his late 60s or early 70s.

He wasn’t just polite. He was pleasant, engaging the passengers in banter, for those who wanted to banter. He had a smile for everyone. After a while the novelty of his appearance (for me at least—it didn’t seem to strike the other passengers as so) wore off and he faded into the woodwork, or the cabin, just another member of the crew.

Soon after that, the sight became so common in various airlines you didn’t notice it anymore.

But the first time made you ask: Why on earth (or in the skies) not? Why should stewardesses look like the Girl from Ipanema? Flight attendants are not there to serve patrons, they are there to serve passengers. They are not there to entertain customers, particularly in their times of dire want, they are there to help commuters, particularly in their times of dire need.

That is the question Fasap (the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines) is asking PAL (Philippine Airlines). That is the answer Fasap is giving PAL.

For which it has filed a notice of strike.

I’ve known Fasap for about a decade and a half now and known it to be one of the most reasonable unions in the world. That is the reason for its success. It does not rush headlong into strikes. It does so only after exhausting other means. Other unions would do well to learn from it. Reasonableness is its middle name.

The working conditions of its female crew suck. That is the core of its cause. That is the reason it has served a notice to strike. It has nothing to do with more pay, more allowances, more benefits. It has everything to do with basic, minimum, elemental, justice. Two-thirds of Fasap’s 1,564 members are women.

Two things in particular Fasap wants to change.

The first is for PAL to scrap its de facto policy of criminalizing pregnancy for flight attendants. There is no other way to put it. You are a PAL stewardess and you get pregnant, you get to file a leave of absence without pay. The leave amounts to close to a year, given the two months for normal delivery and three months for caesarean you are required to take afterward. That period is taken away from your number of years of service. If you get pregnant three times in the 20 years that you work for PAL as a flight attendant, you will register only 17 years served.

That applies only to flight attendants. It’s different for the ground crew. They may work till they are about to deliver, have their 60-day leave paid for by the Social Security System, and come back to work shortly afterward. None of it is taken away from their record.

What makes the policy exceedingly laughable—the kind that makes you cry—is that male flight attendants who take a paternity leave do not have their leave taken out of their years of service. The policy is clear: You are innocent if you get your wife (or mistress) pregnant, but guilty if you yourself get pregnant.

Fasap in fact is simply asking for the period of pregnancy not to be discounted from the flight attendant’s years of service. The rest—what pay or benefits she should get in the course of her nearly-one-year leave—remains subject to negotiation. You can’t get more minimum than that. Other unions would criticize Fasap for being too tame. PAL is accusing it of being too spoiled.

The second, which bears directly on the first, is for PAL to stop parading its flight attendants as eye candy. There is no other way to put it. Since the mid-1990s, PAL has set the retirement age for flight attendants at 40. Too early to get SSS benefits and too late to start again elsewhere. The retirement age for the ground crew ranges from 60 to 65.

PAL says it is merely thinking about the flight attendants’ welfare—they shouldn’t be flying past that age. That is refuted by several things. One is that other airlines now routinely have flight attendants who are senior citizens. There have been no reported cases of them tottering and dying from a heart attack
while serving drinks. Two is that the retirement age for PAL’s pilots is 60 for both men and women. Why should the risks be higher for flight attendants than for pilots? And three is that the line administrators, the officers who fly to rate the flight attendants’ performance, retire at 65.

Elsewhere, the point is to be fit. But PAL’s point is that fit means young. Fit means not being pregnant
. Fit means fit to ogle, fantasize on, flirt with. That is the only explanation for the patent discrimination. That might have been acceptable once with airlines, during Cro-Magnon times, but that is no longer so today. For good reason: It is an exploitative view of flight attendants, and the world will have nothing to do with it. Flight attendants undergo training, undergo skills-building, undergo ordeals with exceptionally rough flights
and even more exceptionally rough passengers. They are not in flights to pretend, they are in flights to attend. That is why they are called flight attendants.

What Fasap wants is merely the same retirement terms as the ground crew and the pilots. It does even better, which is to propose that retirement be based on years of service—counting pregnancies—and not age. Other unions would criticize Fasap for being too restrained. PAL is accusing it of being too out of its mind.

Well, truth has a way of coming out, these days more than others. Quite simply, the flight attendants’ notice of strike serves notice:

PAL is not Pegasus, and flight attendants are not GROs.

Source - Stewardesses are not GROs - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

[RMK711]

Haha I don't think that columnist is male. Much as people want to deny it, pretty flight attendants do attract passengers. It's only if all the airlines are forced to keep old FA like in domestic U.S. that airlines will be willing to do this. If PAL were to have old stewardess and Cathay Pacific/SG/Korean Air continue to keep only young stewardess, they will be in deeper shit than they already are. Who would fly PAL now? The hub sucks, the stewardesses are old and their experienced pilots are gone. Might as well close up shop. Then wala nay national flag carrier. Who says we need one anyway? Maybe we don't deserve one...

[waVref]

this happens to all companies kai employees want security and thinking that they can change mgts thoughts by such act pero ang dakong maproblema ani kai ang customer jud.