Too many cases of illegal dismissals

Last week, I was in Bohol to give a lecture to HR managers, labor leaders, academicians, and lawyers, on the latest Supreme Court (SC) Decisions on leading labor cases. This Friday, I’m flying to Baguio to lecture why employers keep on losing their labor cases before the DOLE, NLRC, Court of Appeals (CA), and SC.

I have written a number of Law books on SC decisions on labor cases, and most of them involve illegal dismissals. One is entitled "How to Terminate Employment Legally, With Honor and Dignity" and another is "How to File and Handle Cases of Illegal Dismissal". These are bestsellers alongside my two books: “The 8 Secrets of Leading Employees: Legal and Administrative Dimension” and the 'The Behavioral and Spiritual Dimension".

Both the Philippine Constitution and the Labor Code assures employees full protection here and abroad, to both unionized and non-unionized. One of the most important areas of protection is the right to security of tenure, the right of employees occupying regular positions and with permanent status, to be secured in their job tenure until retirement, resignation, or death prior to compulsory retirement.

All doubts in the implementation and interpretation of the Labor Code as well its implementing rules and regulations are mandated to be resolved in favor of labor. When workers complain against companies for illegal dismissal, the complainant doesn’t have burden of proof once it’s proven he was dismissed. The employer has to submit evidence there was just cause and the employee was afforded due process.

The equipoise doctrine states that when the evidence presented by management and by the worker are of equal weight, balance should be tilted in favor of labor. If the Labor arbiter rules the dismissal was illegal, the employee should be immediately reinstated even when the employer is able to perfect his appeal within 10 calendar days. The reinstatement should be to his position without loss of seniority rights. There’s no need for the sheriff to serve a writ of execution. The Labor arbiter's order to reinstate is self-executory and immediate.

If management doesn’t want to see him back, then his name should be reinstated in the payroll. He should be paid not just his basic pay but also all the allowances and benefits as if he was never dismissed at all. If the appeal to the NLRC, the CA, and the SC takes 20 years, as cases often last that long or even longer, then that employee would be paid his complete compensation without doing any work. If he earns elsewhere, his earnings would not be deducted from his salary.

These last 12 months there were many landmark decisions that should make employers become even more prudent in hiring and firing. That famous GMA network case followed the dozens of ABS-CBN cases where scriptwriters, cameramen, video editors, technical directors, lightmen, and other production staff are considered regular employees and not independent contractors, or casuals, contractuals, project, seasonal, or piece-rate workers. GMA is now obliged to pay almost ?1 billion as backwages for 15 years.

In the AllTech case, the SC reminded employers that once a job applicant accepts a job, the same can no longer be withdrawn because there’s already an employer-employee relationship. Unilateral withdrawal is tantamount to illegal dismissal. In Macalino v. Coca-Cola, this company for the nth time lost its case of labor-only contracting for dealing with some labor suppliers that don’t comply with labor laws. The same is true with the Nozomi case, when regular functions are assigned to agency workers.

The same principles were involved in the Philippine Pizza case and the PLDT cases which were discovered by the DOLE through on-site inspections. The SC also decided some cases on wages and benefits as well as the manner of computing backwages. These were in the Technika case and in the Del Monte Transport decision. Here, the SC instructed us once more on the importance of documents as evidence. Since management has these documents, the law imposes on them the burden of substantial evidence.

I have so many other cases but for lack of space and time, I can only conclude that out of 24 cases I analyzed randomly, only two were won by management partially. That means employees win 91.7% of the time and management only wins 8.3%. That’s a dismal performance. Management lawyers, most big law firms that collect millions in attorney’s fees have a lot to explain to their clients.