The Supreme Court (SC) has ordered the regularization of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) contractual staff performing duties immediately engaged to its business together with the set up, restore, and upkeep providers of its telecommunications strains.
In a call promulgated on Feb. 14 however issued Friday, the SC junked the petition for overview on certiorari filed by former Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III and the Mangaggawa ng Komunikasyon ng Pilipinas assailing a 2018 Court of Appeals (CA) determination blocking a Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) order for PLDT to regularize its contractual staff.
Bello, as DOLE Secretary in January 2018, instructed the PLDT and its contractors to raise the standing of at the least 7,000 contractual staff to common staff.
PLDT contested the DOLE order earlier than the appeals court docket, claiming it was not in accordance with the regulation.
The High Court affirmed the CA determination, clarifying that labor contracting is just not per se unlawful, citing Article 106 of the Labor Code which allows authentic contracting. DOLE implements this by means of Department Order (DO) 18-A and DO 174-2017.
It additionally stated there’s solely labor-only contracting when the contractor or subcontractor merely recruits, provides, or locations employees to carry out a job, work, or service for a principal and any of the next components are current:
- the contractor or subcontractor doesn’t have substantial capital or funding that pertains to the job, work or service to be carried out and the workers recruited, equipped, or positioned by such contractor or subcontractor are performing actions which can be immediately associated to the primary business of the principal;
- or, the contractor doesn’t train the correct to regulate the efficiency of the work of the contractual worker.
Thus, the contractors’ employees PLDT outsourced for particular jobs, works, or providers doesn’t routinely imply they’re employed below the corporate, the Court added.
The SC, nevertheless, exempted the workers engaged in set up, restore, and upkeep providers of PLDT strains, saying their duties are immediately associated to the corporate’s business.
“It cannot be denied that without the work performed by these employees, PLDT would not be able to carry on its business and deliver the services it promised its consumers,” the Court dominated.
Article 295 of the Labor Code states that staff could also be deemed common in 3 ways together with “when the employee has been engaged to perform activities which are usually necessary or desirable in the usual business or trade of the employer”.
Associate Justice Rodil Zalameda penned the choice.
Meanwhile, the SC remanded the case to the Office of the Regional Director (RDO) of the DOLE-NCR for the overview and figuring out of the consequences of the regularization of the employees performing set up, restore, and upkeep providers.
The RDO is likewise ordered to overview, compute, and correctly decide, the financial award on the labor requirements violation, to which petitioner PLDT, Inc., and the involved contractors are solidarily liable; and to conduct additional applicable proceedings, in keeping with this determination.—LDF, GMA Integrated News
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
