Spot on, rkpk!
LT is such a cunning, scheming, devilsmart guy who achieves his goals by manipulating his employees.
Remember June 98? He really wanted the pilots to strike:
SO flights will be cancelled
SO he could go on print (full page newspaper- SO THE PUBLIC MAY KNOW) to tell the people that because the pilots went on strike, we have no recourse but to cancel most of our flights
SO the people would blame the pilots
SO he would have the upperhand in public sympathy(which is very crucial in the Philippines) in the case
SO he could cancel all losing flights (mostly the domestic "missionary" routes which only PAL flies to as an agreement with the government to give PAL monopoly. These flights go to places like Basco, Batanes in the far north & Tawi-Tawi in the far south which I believe are no longer serviced now.)
SO he could finally get rid of the airplanes doing all these losing flights like the Fokker 50 which he had been wanting to do ever since. He couldn't accept why PAL is operating these flights at a loss. It was against his keen business sense. Who the f..k cares about service to the people? Business is business!
SO in effect, he won. Who gives a s..t if PAL lose its pilots? We could always get others. They're only people. Besides, they will come back. And at a better deal: no more retirement fund, no disability fund, etc.
SO then it will be a sound business enterprise, trimmed of the fat (losing flights, losing aircraft, retirement fund, disability fund)
NOW all it has to do is make money. But first, it needs a little corporate raiding. Not all of PAL loses money. Maintenance Dept & Catering makes money not like Operations. So what to do? Since LT owns 51% of
PR Holdings which owns 51% of PAL, he effectively owns only 26.01% of PAL as a whole. So he divides PAL into 4 parts & sells Maintenance (as one part) & Catering (as another part) to companies which he solely owns 100% (thru his sons). Thereby in effect claiming 100% of all the profits of these money-making departments while still losing a little (on the 26.01% share) on the money-losing departments!
How can this person do that, you may ask? Well, he used to have a tax evasion case worth 26B pesos ($520M) but recently the courts decided that it's the government who owes him billions of pesos. Look at it this way...
There are 15 Supreme Court justices.
I'm being sued for 26B pesos.
What if I offer 1B pesos to 8 of these justices (or to all of them, why not?).
If these 8 agree, which was highly likely (i don't mean to degrade in any way these SC justices but Robert Redford once said, "Everybody has its price."), these 8 will be beholden to me & make me win in my case(s). And I only lose 8B, not 26B so I gain 18B! Yee-hah!
And whadayaknow? LT not only wins the case, but also turns the table on the government because now, the government owes him!
And we are talking here of billions! What do you think the amount involved in the ALPAP strike was? It's a pittance in comparison!
AND SO THAT'S WHY THERE ARE FILIPINO PILOTS OUTSIDE THE PHILIPPINES. BEFORE, NOBODY THOUGHT OF LEAVING BECAUSE THEY WERE HAPPY WITH WHAT THEY'RE GETTING, RETIREMENT FUND AND ALL THAT...BUT NOW...?