Failure of dialogue
There is no space to discuss here the legal merits and demerits of the celebrated PAL-Palea dispute, which is now pending in the Court of Appeals. The point is that this dispute illustrates the sad failure of social dialogue, which is at the heart of rule setting in modern industrial relations and in forging a mutually acceptable social contract. After all, a labor dispute, especially in a big enterprise such as PAL, is a relationship issue, which can not be settled by merely going the legal route or worse, closure route (as what the Qantas management in Australia tried to do tactically).
The 1987 Constitution also has a wise counsel: “The State shall promote the principle of shared responsibility between workers and employers” in their relationships, especially in the use of voluntary modes of dispute settlement in order to have “industrial peace.”
How then does one promote social dialogue and the principle of shared responsibility in industrial relations when the economic rules under globalization tend to favor a global race to the bottom, that is, encouraging competing employers to seek union-free and flexible work arrangements? And yet, as history shows and what the endless social and labor conflicts in America and Europe are now revealing, such a race to the bottom is simply unsustainable.
Toward a new social contract The challenge to the Philippine and other governments today is how to persuade all industry stakeholders to sit down and forge a new social contract fit for the new millennium. Such a contract cannot be forged without addressing the inequities generated by a one-sided system of economic globalization. Hence, the need for a new global social compact addressing the issues raised by the global Occupy Wall Street movement. Without reforms in global and national economic governance, there will never be peace and development.
In the Philippines, it is time that the members of the tripartite council tackle not only the various provisions and implementing rules of the Labor Code but also the terms of Philippine incorporation in an increasingly divided and unequal global economic order.
(Rene E. Ofreneo, Ph. D., is a professor at the UP School of Labor and Industrial Relations. This article is based on a talk he delivered at a recent meeting of the Rotary Club of Pasig.)
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