Saturday, September 20, 2008 Project employees By Dominador A. Almirante Labor case digest
RESPONDENT Universal Robina Sugar Milling Corporation is engaged in the cane sugar milling business. Petitioners Pedy Caseres and Andito Pael were its workers. At the start of their respective employments, they were made to sign a contract of employment for specific project or undertaking. Their contracts were renewed from time to time, until May 1999 when they were informed that their contracts will not be renewed anymore.
Petitioners filed a complaint for, among others, illegal dismissal and regularization. Did their complaint prosper?
Ruling: No.
The fact that petitioners were constantly re-hired does not ipso facto establish that they became regular employees. Their respective contracts with respondent show that there were intervals in their employment, in petitioner Caseres’s case, while his employment lasted from August 1989 to May 1999, the duration of his employment ranged from one day to several months at a time, and such successive employments were not continuous.
With regard to petitioner Pael, his employment never lasted for more than a month at a time. These support the conclusion that they were indeed project employees, and since their work depended on the availability of such contracts of projects, necessarily the employment of respondent’s work force was not permanent but coterminous with the projects to which they were assigned and from whose payrolls they were paid.
As ruled in Palomares v. National Labor Relations Commission, 343 Phil. 213 (1997), it would be extremely burdensome for their employer to retain them as permanent employees and pay them wages even if there were no projects to work on.
Moreover, even if petitioners were repeatedly and successively re-hired, still it did not qualify them as regular employees, as length of service is not the controlling determinant of the employment tenure of a project employee, but whether the employment has been fixed for a specific project or undertaking, its completion has been determined at the time of the engagement of the employee. Further, the proviso in Article 280, stating that an employee who has rendered service for at least one (1) year shall be considered as regular employee, pertains to casual employees and not to project employees.
Accordingly, petitioners cannot complain of illegal dismissal inasmuch as the completion of the contract or phase thereof for which they have been engaged automatically terminates their employment. (Pedy Caseres and Andito Pael vs. Universal Robina Sugar, Milling Corp., et al., G.R. No. 159343, Sept. 28, 2007).
