SC backs CA ruling on PLDT worker regularization

THE Supreme Court (SC) upheld a decision of the Court of Appeals (CA), which had found that the Labor department acted improperly in ordering the regularization of PLDT Inc. support staff.

In a 38-page decision made public on Thursday, the high court backed the CA finding that PLDT employees involved in installation, repair, and maintenance services are eligible for regular status, though it drew the line at regularizing contractual workers performing janitorial, clerical, information technology, back-office support, call center, sales, and other such services.

Former Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III had ordered PLDT to grant regular status to 7,344 workers, but the CA found that Mr. Bello had examined only a limited number of workers’ cases in coming to his decision, and said his review process failed to evaluate the available evidence properly.

The SC affirmed the CA finding that Mr. Bello had committed grave abuse of discretion in issuing his resolutions.

“The approach employed by the DoLE was highly speculative and failed to meet the substantial evidence requirement. The Court expresses apprehension about this approach considering the result of the interviews of less than 1,000 employees, were used as basis to regularize 6,000 other employees,” according to the decision, written by Associate Justice Rodil V. Zalameda.

“This conjectural method is indeed whimsical and arbitrary clearly indicating that the conclusions reached were tainted by grave abuse of discretion,” it added.

The SC held that labor contracting is not illegal per se, as management enjoys some leeway in deciding which functions can be performed by regular workers.

“Article 106 of the Labor Code expressly allows an employer to engage in legitimate labor contracting, which the DoLE implements through DO 18-A and DO 174-2017. An employer is not necessarily engaged in labor-only contracting whenever it farms out specific jobs, works, or services. We must distinguish between legitimate labor contracting and labor-only contracting,” according to the decision. —