Define irony.

It’s making a case against a concept using a defense in favor of the same.

Take the global job-outsourcing phenomenon.

In recent weeks, migrant workers’ organizations in Hong Kong and the United States have been criticizing Philippine Airlines for its outsourcing program that led to the separation of almost 2,400 workers.

Ironically, these groups who have been noisily protesting against PAL are unknowingly supporting the global outsourcing phenomenon.

It’s funny how the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Union, Alliance of Progressive Labor-Hong Kong, and a few members of Partido ng Manggagawa in the US are condemning PAL’s outsourcing/spin-off program when in truth and in fact, the current predominance of Filipino workers in HK and the US is due to the state-sponsored outsourcing and contracting-out policy.

This is because almost all Filipinos working in the US and the former British colony are on employment contracts inasmuch as American and HK-based companies engage in contracting out jobs to foreigners like Filipinos. Isn’t this the reason why Filipino laborers abroad are labeled “overseas contract workers”?

The situation borders on the comical when these foreign-based Filipino labor groups called for a boycott of PAL. By urging Filipino workers not to patronize the flag carrier, these migrant groups are, in effect, pushing OFWs to take other airlines for their air travel needs to and from their host countries.

But in HK, the US and in many parts of the world, most, if not all, airlines have already outsourced non-core functions to third-party service providers. Some of these outsourced jobs may have already been taken over by Filipino workers themselves.

Therefore, those who denounce outsourcing but are endorsing other airlines that were pioneers in this business practice are unwittingly supporting what they abhor.

Besides, what is so abominable about outsourcing when hundreds of thousands of Filipinos at home are gainfully employed due to the Business Process Outsourcing industry?

Those who rage against outsourcing like former employees of PAL and their supporters should lecture fresh graduates who just received their first pay check as call-center agents about the so-called “evils” of outsourcing.

Former PAL workers and their supporters in the labor movement should wake up to the new reality: Outsourcing is here and is likely to stay. Even the exodus to other countries for jobs is courtesy of the outsourcing and contracting- out policy of many nations.

When Pinoy workers abroad are hired for jobs that citizens of their host countries should be getting, they shouldn’t complain when local jobs are outsourced to fellow Filipinos like in the case of PAL.

After all, as the saying goes “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”