EDITORIAL - Strike-derived gains at public expense

The reason why threats of strikes in such companies as Philippine Airlines and Visayan Electric Company are difficult to resolve is because the workers who are threatening to strike know they hold the coercive advantage in any standoff.

 Air transport and power distribution are vital industries. Service disruption in these areas can result in severe economic losses, missed opportunities and plain inconvenience. Anyone with coercive advantage in these industries can easily parlay that advantage to win concessions.

 The problem with winning concessions by means of coercive power over vital industries is that they come at the expense of public interest. It is the public, which has nothing to do with a company's labor problems, that is being made to unjustly and needlessly suffer.

 This is no different from a hostage-taking, only that, unlike a hostage-taking, the perpetrators are not regarded as criminals. On the contrary, after trodding on the public's right to expect dedicated service, the perpetrators often have their cake and eat it too. 

 Labor problems are always distinct possibilities in employer-employee relationships. But the right to strike should not go beyond the scope of a particular company's interests where it begins to infect and affect the larger public interest.

 That successfully mediated labor problems far outnumber those that end up unresolved show most parties can come together. Only workers who think only of their own interests would have no qualms if their internal labor problems burst at the seams and cause injury to everyone else.

 Making matters Worse is the apparent naivete of government in dealing with sensitive labor problems. One official of an industrial peace council said he hopes to resolve the problem at Veco in the same manner the council resolved problems at a hotel and a restaurant.

 To compare the problem at Veco to a problem involving a hotel or restaurant is silly. The food catering and hospitality businesses are not vital industries. No party of interest in their labor problems holds any coercive advantage to take public interest hostage.

 Life goes on even if people cannot eat in restaurants or stay in hotels for a while. But things go haywire if electricity goes out or if air transport services become unavailable. Yet some workers do not care what the public loses, as long as they can get what they desire.