AIM gains upper-hand vs. union

The Asian Institute of Management has gained the upperhand in its five-year-old fight with the faculty union over the issue of back wages.

The Court of Appeals, in a pre-Christmas decision, has upheld the decision of the National Labor Relations Commission rejecting the claim of the AIM Faculty Association that the teaching and non-teaching staff of the region’s first MBA school were entitled under a Marcos decree to 70 percent of the tuition fee increases since 1975.

The NLRC had earlier ruled that the fact that the education department not only failed to issue implementing rules on school fee increases to cover such foreign student-oriented schools as AIM but also did not prosecute AIM “brings about the reasonable presumption that there is no need for respondent AIM to submit applications for tuition fee increases” and that the education department considered AIM as “not covered” by the laws mandating a 70 percent allocation of tuition fee increases to personnel wages.

In upholding the NLRC, the Court of Appeals only focused on dismissing on technical grounds the petition for certiorari filed by the AIM faculty union.

“Where the issue or question involved affects the wisdom or soundness of the (NLRC) decision, not the jurisdiction of the court to render said decision or its validity, the same is beyond the province of the special action for certiorari,” said Justice Jane Aurora Lantion, quoting an earlier Supreme Court decision that certiorari is a remedy designed for the correction of errors of jurisdiction and not errors of judgment.

The AIM Faculty Association is led by chairman Victor Limlingan, who has since left the school to join the DMCI Group and also become an adviser to Vice President Jejomar Binay, and counts among the key members Ramos-era Agrarian Reform Secretary Ernesto Garilao, who has also moved on to become president of the Zuellig Family Foundation and a faculty member of the government’s Development Academy of the Philippines.