Philippine Airlines’ labor agreement on outsourcing

(From Travelgoes.com)

“The Company undertakes not to contract out existing positions, jobs, divisions, and departments presently occupied by present or future regular employees within the collective bargaining unit. All existing programs whereby positions, jobs, divisions, and departments presently occupied by regular employees are being contracted out temporarily arising from exigencies of operations, shall immediately be deemed discontinued when the said exigencies or needs cease. Thereafter, where these programs have resulted in transfers and/or other adverse implications on security of tenure, all affected employees shall be immediately restored to their status and position prior to said contracting out, without any loss of seniority or diminution of benefits.

In case the Company deems it necessary to reorganize its corporate structure for the viability of its operations by forming joint ventures and spin-offs, the Company shall do so only after proper consultations with PALEA [Philippine Airlines’ Employees Association] not less than forty-five (45) days before the implementation of said reorganization for the protection of the Union and those affected employees.”

— From Article 24, Section 4 of the 1995-2000 labor agreement between Philippine Airlines (PAL) and the PALEA. Arguably, the agreement remains in effect after both parties agreed to extend it in 1998. During that time, the company sought — and later secured — court approval to temporarily suspend debt payments to creditors. In October, the Philippines’ Department of Labor and Employment affirmed an earlier decision dated June, allowing the outsourcing of 4,000 jobs in the airlines’ inflight catering, airport services, and reservations staff. The June 2010 decision was made after workers appealed a much earlier verdict rendered in March that also ruled against their favor. Earlier, workers filed a case against PAL, disputing its plans to contract out its labor needs. The case also sought to renew the labor agreement that had already lapsed. [See: Labor Dept. allows layoff of PAL workers]

Carranza on Filipino comfort women

This photo accompanies an article posted on the wordpress.com account of the University of Maryland's Asian American studies program which indicates that Americans GIs also frequented comfort women. (aast.wordpress.com)

“There are only less than 170 Filipina comfort women still alive. Exposing plagiarism? Important but not as urgent. Calling out imprudent tweeting by public officials? Not worth more than a week of reporting. But these women coerced into sexual slavery who still have not received the apology and reparations they deserve? It’s now or never.”

— From the Facebook status of Ruben Carranza, former commissioner of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, and currently a senior associate of the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice. The status update was posted days after a presidential aide was criticized for announcing via Twitter  how much she disliked wine served in a Vietnam state banquet attended by a delegation headed by Philippine President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. Much earlier, the Philippine Supreme Court came out with a plagiarized decision that ruled against a petition of comfort women which sought an apology and reparations from Japan.

11 things that make Isaac Davis’ life worth living in Woody Allen movie, Manhattan

Screen grab of Manhattan's characters driving out of New York in what appears to be a really cool Porsche 356

1) Groucho Marx

2) Willie Mays

3) Second movement of Jupiter symphony

4) Louis Armstrong’s Potatohead blues

5) Swedish movies

6) Sentimental education by [Gustave] Flaubert

7) Marlon Brando

8) Frank Sinatra

9) Apples and Pears by [Paul] Cezanne

10) Crabs at Sam Wo’s (A Chinese restaurant on 813 Washington Street in Manhattan) [See: Sam Wo]

11) Tracy’s face (Tracy being the girlfriend of Davis, a 17-year-old high-school student played by Mariel Hemingway)

— as spoken into a microphone attached to a cassette tape recorder by Davis, played by Woody Allen, while making notes about a short story he planned to write regarding “people in Manhattan who are constantly creating neurotic problems for themselves.” [See: Manhattan The Movie]

Self on curing flu

You go to bed, wrap up warm, and drink a bottle of scotch. Technically it’s meant to be half a bottle, but I wanted to make absolutely sure. I cancelled all calls, put the Don’t-Disturb docket on the latch – and I was sleeping like a baby well before ten.”

John Self, protagonist of Martin Amis’ novel, Money on his so-called “miracle flu cure” [See: Martin Amis, Money]

Bing on humor in the workplace

'And stop sending me email about penis enlargement, Santos.'

“In a world where nothing is funny, humor is powerful. First, it’s the medium through which alliances are forged, coded data shared, and the illusion of humanity preserved. But the joke is also a small act of rebellion within the pompous corporate state, and as such, is vaguely threatening to viziers who view all jovial behavior as unseemly…In short, he who laughs last laughs carefully.”

Stanley Bing (pen name of CBS corporate communications vice president Gil Schwartz) in an essay entitled Going for the Jocular in The Big Bing: Black Holes of Time Management, Gaseous Executive Bodies, Exploding Careers, and Other Theories on the Origins of the Business Universe

Benz on Collateralized Debt Obligations

A chocolate fondue fountain is used as a metaphor for the kind of debt — called CDOs — that precipitated the 2008 global meltdown. (www.itsrainingchocolate.com)

A CDO is a bundle of debt you can buy. In the sense of loans, it works like this: An underwriter, or investment bank, buys many loans, and pools together everyone’s first few payment, then their next few payments, and calls these tranches. Each tranche is sliced up and sold as CDOs, and each tranche carries an increasing degree of risk. The highest quality rated tranches get the first dibs on payment from the loan pools. However, because they are less risky, the interest rates they earn are not as high as those for tranches that are later in line.
Think of it as one of those tiered chocolate fondue fountains that’s shaped like upright, stacked satellite dishes. The top bowl has to overflow to fall into the next bowl. If the chocolate stops running (think default, early repayment), the first cup gets filled with what’s still in the system, and maybe some of the second tier, but people at the bottom, who otherwise would have had the most chocolate are instead stuck there holding their toothpicks and wishing they’d just ordered the cheesecake.

— Chris Benz, one of five of McSweeney’s interns who prepared the glossary found in Michael LewisPanic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity

Gellhorn on writing

Martha Gellhorn with her third husband, Ernest Hemingway during their honeymoon in Hawaii in 1940 (New York Times)

“A writer publishes to be read; then hopes the readers are affected by the words, hopes that their opinions are changed or strengthened or enlarged, or that readers are pushed to notice something that had not stopped to notice before. All my reporting life, I have thrown small pebbles into a very large pond, and have no way of knowing whether any pebble caused the slightest ripple. I don’t need to worry about that. My responsibility was the effort.”

— From Introduction to The Granta Book of Reportage written by Ian Jack, quoting Martha Gellhorn, novelist, travel writer, and journalist who has a journalism award named after her