Under the Constitution, the employees’ rights are protected including security of tenure [Section 18 of Article II and Section 3 of Article XIII].
Employment [tenure] shall be secured. The employer can only terminate them for just or authorized causes and always with due process. This is so because employment is the main source of livelihood of most families.
An employee who is illegally dismissed from work shall be entitled to reinstatement and full backwages, inclusive of allowances and to his other benefits or their monetary equivalent computed from the time he was dismissed up to the time of his actual reinstatement.
For a dismissal from employment to be valid, it must be for a just or authorized cause and the procedural requirements of due process, through notice and hearing, must be complied.
The employer must furnish the employee with two written notices before the termination of the employment. The first notice informs the employee of particular acts or omissions for which he is being dismissed, while the second notice informs the employee of the employer’s decision to dismiss him.
The requirement of a hearing is not an actual trial, but rather giving the employee a chance to hear his side.
An employer may terminate an employment for any of the following causes: [1] serious misconduct or willful disobedience of employer’s lawful orders in connection with work; [2] gross and habitual neglect of duties; [3] fraud or willful breach of trust; [4] commission of a crime against the person of the employer or any immediate member of his family and [5] other causes analogous to number 1, 2, 3 and 4 [Article 297, Labor Code].
In labor cases, the most common defense of employers is that the employee was not dismissed but abandoned his work.
In its latest upload on 12 September 2022, our Supreme Court in Cornworld Breeding Systems Corp. v. CA, et. tu., G.R. No 204075 dated August 17, 2022, ruled on the issue of abandonment and its requirements to be a valid dismissal.
In 1982, Lucena started as a field labor employee. She rose from the ranks to become Vice-President for research.
Her ordeal started when Laureano took over the management of the company when its president, a relative of Laureano, suffered a stroke.
In 2009, Lucena was humiliated before the meeting when she was berated for failure to attend some of the meetings and answer his phone calls. As a result, she was confined and took a sick leave.
She asked for her salary, but a memo was issued appointing Allan as overseer of all offices. She was put on a floating status. She attended a meeting to represent the company, but Laureano sent two representatives.
Barely a month after, she filed an illegal dismissal case. The employer argued that she was not dismissed but refused to cooperate and the company had lost trust and confidence in her and she just resented what happened and refused to report for work.
The employer went to the SC after the CA reversed the Labor Arbiter and the National Labor Relations Commission decisions.
Our Supreme Court ruled that deliberate refusal of an employee to resume his work is abandonment. Though it appears not included in the enumeration as a valid cause of dismissal, it is considered as ground for dismissal listed as No. 5 – being analogous to neglect of duty.
For abandonment of work to exist, it is essential that: [1] employee must have failed to report for work or must have been absent without valid or justifiable reason and [2] there must have been a clear intention to cut [sever] the employer-employee relationship as shown by some overt acts. Absence must be accompanied by overt acts pointing to the fact that the employee simply does not want to work anymore, and the employer must prove that there was unjustified refusal to go back to work.
Cornworld failed to prove abandonment. There was no showing by the company that she committed overt acts that clearly and unequivocally showed her intention to abandon her job.
On the contrary, sufficient proof was presented by Lucena indicating that she had no intention to sever her employment: she filed an application for leave and she filed a labor case barely a month after she learned that in the last meeting, her boss sent two representatives.
The immediate filing of illegal dismissal complaint is enough proof of her intention to return to work and negate the employer’s charge of abandonment. Thus, it was decided that Lucena was constructively dismissed, illegally.
