Route helpers are regular employees

Even while the language of law might have been more definitive, the clarity of its spirit and intent, i.e., to ensure a “regular” worker’s security of tenure, however, can hardly be doubted.

Petitioner Emmanuel D. Quintanar and 29 others were hired by Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines Inc. from 1994 up to 2000 as route helpers. Their duties consist of distributing bottled Coca-Cola products to customers in their assigned areas. They were paid salaries and commissions at the average of P3,000 per month.

Coca-Cola transferred them successively as workers to manpower agencies: Lipercon Services, Inc., People’s Services Inc., ROMAC, and the latest being Interserve Management and Manpower Resources, Inc.

The Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) inspected Coca-Cola to determine whether it is complying with mandated labor standards. Coca-Cola was held liable to pay petitioners underpayment of 13th month pay, emergency cost of living allowance, and other claims. As soon as respondents learned of the filing of the claims with Dole, petitioners were dismissed on various dates in January 2004. They filed on Nov. 10, 2006 their complaint for illegal dismissal claiming they are regular employees of Coca-Cola. Did their complaint find merit?

Ruling: Yes.

Contrary to the position taken by Coca-Cola, it cannot be said that route helpers no longer enjoy the employee-employer relationship since they became employees of Interserve.

In May 2003, the Court in Magsalin struck down Coca-Cola’s defense that the complainants therein, who were route-helpers, were its “temporary” workers. In that decision, the Court explained:

xxx

Coca-Cola Bottlers Phils., Inc. is one of the leading and largest manufacturers of softdrinks in the country. Respondent workers have long been in the service of petitioner company.

The workers would go with route salesmen on board delivery trucks and undertake the task of loading and unloading products to various delivery points.

While the language of law might have been more definitive, the clarity of its spirit and intent, i.e., to ensure a “regular” worker’s security of tenure, however, can hardly be doubted.

In determining whether employment should be considered regular or not, the applicable test is the reasonable connection between the activity performed by the employee in relation to the usual business or trade of the employer. The standard, supplied by the law itself, is whether the work is necessary or desirable in the usual business of the employer, a fact that can be assessed by looking into the nature of the services rendered and its relation to the general scheme under which the business is usually pursued.

Coca-Cola’s argument that its usual trade is softdrink manufacturing and that work assigned to workers as sales route helpers involves merely “postproduction activities,” one which is not indispensable in the manufacture of its products, scarcely can be persuasive.

If, as argued by petitioner, only those whose work are directly involved in the production of softdrinks may be held performing functions necessary and desirable in its usual business, there would have then been no need for it to even maintain regular truck sales route helpers. The nature of the work performed must be viewed from a perspective of the business or trade in its entirety and not on a confined scope (Mendoza, J., SC En Banc, Emmanuel D. Quintanar, et. al. vs. Coca-Cola Bottlers, Philippines, Inc., G.R. No. 210565, June 28, 2016, quoting Magsalin vs. National Organization of Workingmen, 451 Phil. 254 (2003).