FIRST DIVISION
|
ROQUE Petitioner, - versus - Respondents. |
G.R. No. 160325
Present: PUNO, C.J.,
Chairperson, SANDOVAL-GUTIERREZ, AZCUNA,
and GARCIA, JJ. Promulgated: |
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D E C I S I O
N
GARCIA, J.:
By
this petition for review on certiorari, petitioner Roque S. Duterte seeks the
review and setting aside of the decision[1]
dated June 20, 2003 of the Court of Appeals (CA) in CA-G.R. SP No. 71729, as reiterated in its resolution[2]
of October 5, 2003, affirming an earlier resolution[3]
of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) which ruled that petitioner
was not illegally dismissed from employment due to disease under Article 284 of
the Labor Code.
The
facts:
In
September 1993, petitioner was hired as truck/trailer driver by respondent
Kingswood Trading Company, Inc. (KTC) of which co-respondent Filemon Lim is the
President. Petitioner was on the P700 per trip. When not driving, petitioner was assigned to
clean and maintain respondent KTC’s equipment and vehicles for which he was paid
P125 per day. Regularly, petitioner would be seconded by respondent Filemon
Lim to drive for one of KTC’s clients, the Philippine National Oil Corporation,
but always subject to respondents’ convenience.
On
A month later, petitioner returned to
work armed with a medical certificate signed by his attending physician at the PHC,
attesting to petitioner’s fitness to work. However, said certificate was not
honored by the respondents who refused to allow petitioner to work.
In February 1999, petitioner suffered
a second heart attack and was again confined at the PHC. Upon release, he
stayed home and spent time to recuperate.
In June 1999, petitioner
attempted to report back to work but was told to look for another job because
he was unfit. Respondents refused to declare petitioner fit to work unless
physically examined by the company physician. Respondents’ promise to pay
petitioner his separation pay turned out to be an empty one. Instead,
petitioner was presented, for his signature, a document as proof of his receipt
of the amount of P14,375.00 as first installment of his Social Security
System (SSS) benefits. Having received no such amount, petitioner refused to affix
his signature thereon and instead requested for the necessary documents from
respondents to enable him to claim his SSS benefits, but the latter did not
heed his request.
On
In
a decision[4]
dated
WHEREFORE, in the light
of the foregoing, judgment is hereby rendered declaring complainant to have
been terminated from employment on the ground that he has been suffering from a
disease.
Respondents are hereby
directed to pay complainant as follows:
1. Separation pay equivalent to one-half
(1/2) month salary for every year of service computed at six (6) years of
service in the amount of Forty-Two Thousand (P42,000.00) Pesos.
2. P21,000.00) Pesos; and
3. Service Incentive Leave pay for three
(3) years in the amount of Ten Thousand (P10,000.00) Pesos.
All other claims herein
sought are hereby denied for lack of merit and factual basis.
SO ORDERED.
On
respondents’ appeal, the NLRC, in its Resolution[6]
of
WHEREFORE, the decision appealed from is VACATED and SET ASIDE.[7] A new
one is hereby entered DISMISSING the instant case for lack of merit.
Therefrom, petitioner went on certiorari
to the CA in CA-G.R. SP No. 71729. In
the herein assailed decision dated
We REVERSE.
At bottom, this case involves the simple
issue of the legality of one’s termination from employment made complicated,
however, by over analysis. Simply put,
the question at hand pivots on who has the onus of presenting the necessary
medical certificate to justify what would otherwise be classified as legal or
illegal, as the case may be, dismissal from the service. The following may be
another formulation of the issue: For purposes of Article 284 of the Labor
Code, would the dismissal of an employee on the ground of disease under the
said Article 284 still require the employer to present a certification from a
competent public health authority that the disease is of such a nature that it
could not be cured within a period of six months even with proper medical
treatment? To both the NLRC and the CA, a
dismissal on the ground of disease under Article 284 of the Code is illegal only
if the employee himself
presents the required certification from
the proper health authority. Since, as in this case, petitioner failed to
produce such certification, his dismissal could not be illegal.
In the precise words of
the NLRC which the CA effectively
affirmed:
Neither can
it be gainsaid that Article 284 of the Labor Code applies in the instant case
since the complainant [petitioner] failed
to establish that he is suffering from a disease and his continued employment
is prohibited by law or prejudicial to his health or to the health of his
co-employees nor was he able to prove that his illness is of such nature or at
such stage that it cannot be cured
within a period of six months even with proper treatment.[8]
In order for the complainant to be covered
by Article 284 of the Labor Code, he
must first present a certification by a competent public health authority that
his continued employment will result in the aforesaid consequences, but
unfortunately for the complainant, we find none in the instant case. For the respondents to require the
complainant to submit a medical certificate showing that he is already physically
fit as a condition of his continued employment under the prevailing
circumstance cannot be considered as neither harsh nor oppressive. xxx
Prescinding
from the above, there is no illegal dismissal to speak of. This finding is
further strengthened by the fact that no termination letter or formal notice of
dismissal was adduced to prove that complainant’s services have been
terminated. Considering that no illegal
dismissal took place, the complainant’s claim that his right to due process of
law had been violated finds no application to the case at bar. (Emphasis
added).
The Court disagrees with the NLRC and
CA.
Article 284 of the Labor Code
explicitly provides:
Art. 284. DISEASE
AS GROUND FOR TERMINATION. -- An
employer may terminate the services of an employee who has been found to
be suffering from any disease and whose continued employment is prohibited by
law or is prejudicial to his health as
well as to the health of his co-employees:
Provided, That he is paid separation pay equivalent to at least one (1)
month salary or to one-half (1/2) month salary for every year of service,
whichever is greater, a fraction of at least six (6) months being considered as one
(1) whole year.
Corollarily,
in order to validly terminate employment on the basis of disease, Book VI, Rule
I, Section 8 of the Omnibus Implementing Rules of the Labor Code requires:
Disease
as a ground for dismissal. -- Where the employee suffers from a disease and his
continued employment is prohibited by law or prejudicial to his health or to
the health of his co-employees, the employer shall not terminate his employment
unless there is a certification by a
competent public health authority that the disease is of such nature or at such
a stage that it cannot be cured within a period of six (6) months even with
proper medical treatment. If the
disease or ailment can be cured within the period, the employer shall not
terminate the employee but shall ask the employee to take a leave. The employer shall reinstate such employee to
his former position immediately upon the restoration of his normal health.
(Book VI, Rule 1, Sec. 8 of the Implementing Rules)
In
a very real sense, both the NLRC and the appellate court placed on the
petitioner the burden of establishing, by a certification of a competent public
authority, that his ailment is such that it cannot be cured within a period of
six months even with proper medical treatment. And pursuing their logic, petitioner
could not claim having been illegally dismissed due to disease, failing, as he did, to present such certification.
To be sure, the NLRC’s above posture is,
to say the least, without basis in law and jurisprudence. And when the CA affirmed the NLRC, the
appellate court in effect placed on the petitioner the onus of proving his
entitlement to separation pay and thereby validated herein respondents’ act of
dismissing him from employment even without proof of existence of a legal
ground for dismissal.
The law is unequivocal: the employer,
before it can legally dismiss its employee on the ground of disease, must
adduce a certification from a competent public authority that the disease of
which its employee is suffering is of such nature or at such a stage that it
cannot be cured within a period of six months even with proper treatment.
Here, the record does not contain the required
certification. And when the respondents asked the petitioner to look for
another job because he was unfit to work, such unilateral declaration, even if
backed up by the findings of its company doctors, did not meet the quantum
requirement mandated by the law, i.e.,
there must be a certification by a competent
public authority.[9]
For sure, the posture taken by both
the NLRC and the CA is inconsistent with this Court’s pronouncement in Tan v. National Labor Relations Commission,[10]
thus:
Consistent with the Labor Code state policy of affording
protection to labor and of liberal construction of labor laws in favor of the
working class, Sec. 8, Rule 1, Book VI, of the Omnibus Rules Implementing the
Labor Code provides – Where the employee suffers from a disease and his
continued employment is prohibited by law or prejudicial to his health or to
the health of his co-employees, the employer shall not terminate his
employment, unless there is a certification by a competent public authority
that the disease is of such nature or at such a stage, that it cannot be cured
within a period of six (6) months even with proper medical treatment.. There is absolutely nothing on record to
show that such a certification was ever obtained by [the employer] much less
that one was issued by a competent public authority …[o]n the contrary,
what appears on record is a Medical Certificate dated May 5, 1999 issued by Dr.
Lenita C. de Castro certifying to the contrary, i.e., that [the employee] was
in fact already fit to return to work.
However, [the employer] did not accept the certificate and insisted that
[the employee] present one issued by a government physician. For his failure to present such a
certificate, [the employee] was penalized with dismissal. Obviously,
the condition imposed by [the employer] finds no basis under the law. To reiterate, contrary to [the employer’s]
insistence that [the employee] first obtain a medical certificate attesting
that he was already cured of pulmonary tuberculosis, the abovequoted Sec. 9,
Rule 1, Book VI, of the Omnibus Rules is clear that the burden is upon [the
employer] not [the employee] to justify the dismissal with a certificate public
authority that [the employee’s] disease is at such stage or of such nature that
it cannot be cured within six (6) months even with proper medical treatment.
For [the employer’s] blatant failure to present one, we can only rule that [the
employee’s] dismissal, like that of Garrido, is illegal, invalid and
unjustified. (Emphasis and words in brackets supplied.)
In Triple
Eight Integrated Services, Inc. v.
NLRC,[11]
the Court explains why the submission of the requisite medical
certificate is for the employer’s compliance, thus:
The requirement for a medical certificate
under Article 284 of the Labor Code cannot be dispensed with; otherwise, it
would sanction the unilateral and arbitrary determination by the employer of
the gravity or extent of the employee’s illness and thus defeat the public
policy on the protection of labor.
In thus ruling out an illegal dismissal
situation in the instant case, the CA effectively agreed with the NLRC’s view that
the fact of dismissal must be evidenced by positive and overt acts, citing Veterans Phil. Scout Security Agency v.
NLRC.[12]
Said case, however, is not on all fours
with the present one. In Veterans,
the employer offered the complainant-employee a monthly cash allowance and other
benefit pending a new assignment. Therein,
the employee was not forthrightly nor constructively dismissed. In fact, the employee in Veterans was found to be in bad faith as he filed his complaint for
illegal dismissal the day immediately after he accepted the company’s offer of employment
benefits. Hence, the Court’s ruling in Veterans that the fact of dismissal must
be evidenced by positive and overt acts indicating the intention to dismiss. These considerations do not obtain here.
Petitioner was not allowed back to work. Neither did he receive any monetary
assistance from his employer, and, worse, respondents refused to give him the
necessary documents to enable him to claim his SSS benefits.
Much was made by the NLRC – and the CA
– about petitioner’s refusal to comply with respondents’ order to submit a
medical certificate – irresistibly implying that such refusal is what
constrained them to refuse to take petitioner back in.
We are not persuaded.
Even assuming, in gratia argumenti, that petitioner committed what may be
considered an act of insubordination for refusing to present a medical
certificate, such offense, without more, certainly did not warrant the latter’s
placement in a floating status, a veritable dismissal, and deprived of his only source of livelihood.
We are not unmindful of the connection
between the nature of petitioner’s disease and his job as a truck/trailer
driver. We are also fully aware that petitioner’s job places at stake the
safety of the public. However, we do not agree with the NLRC that petitioner was validly dismissed
because his continued employment was prohibited by the basic legal mandate that
reasonable diligence must be exercised to prevent prejudice to the public,
which justified respondents in refusing work to petitioner. Petitioner could have been admitted
back to work performing other tasks, such as cleaning and maintaining
respondent company’s machine and transportation assets.
As a final consideration, the Court
notes that the NLRC, as sustained by the
CA, considered the petitioner as a field worker and, on that basis, denied his claim for benefits
under Articles 94[13]
to 95[14]
of the Labor Code, such as holiday pay and service
incentive leave pay. Article 82 of
the Code lists personnel who are not
entitled to the benefits aforementioned.[15] Among the excluded group are “field
personnel,” referring to non-agricultural employees who regularly
perform their duties away from the
principal place of business or branch office of the employer and whose actual
hours of work in the field cannot be determined with reasonable certainty.
As a general proposition, field personnel are those
whose job/service are not or cannot be effectively monitored by the employer or
his representative, their workplace
being away from
the principal office and whose hours and days of work cannot be determined with
reasonable certainty. Field personnel are paid specific amount for rendering
specific service or performing specific work.
If required to be at specific places
at specific times, employees, including drivers, cannot be said to be field
personnel despite the fact that they are performing work away from the principal
office of the employer. Thus, to determine whether an employee is a field
employee, it is also necessary to ascertain if actual hours of work in the
field can be determined with reasonable certainty by the employer. In so
doing, an inquiry must be made as to whether or not the employee’s time and
performance are constantly supervised by the employer.[16]
Guided by the foregoing norms, petitioner
was definitely a regular employee of respondent company and not its field
personnel, as the term is used in the Labor Code. As it were, he was based at the principal office of
the respondent company. His actual work
hours, i.e., from P125.00
per day for cleaning and maintaining KTC’s equipment. Not falling under the
category of field personnel, petitioner
is consequently entitled to both holiday pay and service incentive leave pay,
as mandated by Articles 94 and 95 of the Labor Code.
All told, we rule and so hold that petitioner’s
dismissal did not comply with both the substantive and procedural aspects of
due process. Clearly, his dismissal is tainted with invalidity.[17]
WHEREFORE,
the assailed decision of the CA in CA-G.R. SP No.
71729 is REVERSED and SET ASIDE. Respondents are
declared guilty of illegal dismissal and
are ordered to pay petitioner separation pay equivalent to one (1) month
pay for every
year of service,
in lieu of his reinstatement, plus his full backwages from the time his
employment was terminated up to the time
this Decision becomes final. For this
purpose, let this case be REMANDED
to the labor arbiter for the computation of petitioner’s separation pay, backwages and
other monetary awards due him.
Costs against respondents.
SO
ORDERED.
CANCIO C.
GARCIA
Associate Justice
WE CONCUR:
REYNATO S. PUNO
Chief Justice
Chairperson
|
ANGELINA SANDOVAL-GUTIERREZ Associate Justice |
RENATO C. CORONA Associate Justice |
ADOLFO S. AZCUNA
Associate Justice
C
E R T I F I C A T I O N
Pursuant
to Section 13, Article VIII of the Constitution, I certify that the conclusions
in the above decision had been reached in consultation before the case was
assigned to the writer of the opinion of the Court’s Division.
REYNATO S. PUNO
Chief Justice
[1] Penned by Associate Justice Juan
Q. Enriquez, Jr., with Associate Justices Rodrigo V. Cosico and Hakim
S. Abdulwahid, concurring; rollo, pp. 35-39.
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5] Security of Tenure. - In cases of
regular employment, the employer shall not terminate the services of an employee except for a just cause
or when authorized by this Title. An
employee who is unjustly dismissed from
work shall be entitled to reinstatement without loss of seniority rights and other privileges and
to his full backwages, inclusive of allowances, and to his other benefits or their monetary equivalent
computed from the time his compensation was withheld from him up to the time of his actual reinstatement.
[6] Rollo, pp. 46-52.
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10] G.R. No. 116807,
[11] 359 Phil. 955, 968 (1998).
[12] G.R. Nos. L-78062 and 83927,
[13] ART. 94. RIGHT TO HOLIDAY PAY. – (a) Every worker shall be paid his regular
daily wage during regular holidays, except in retail and service establishments
regularly employing less than ten (10) workers; xxx
[14] ART. 95. RIGHT TO SERVICE INCENTIVE LEAVE. – (a) Every employee who has
rendered at least one year of service shall be entitled to a yearly service
incentive leave of five days with pay.
[15] Azucena, Everyone’s Labor Code, 2001 ed., p.
57.
[16]
Auto BusTtransport Systems, Inc. v.
Antonio Bautista, G.R. No. 156367, May
16, 2005, 458 SCRA 578.
[17] Sy
v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 142293,