CASE DIGEST

VIR-JEN SHPPING AND MARINE SERVICES, INC. VS. NLRC

G.R. NO. L-58011-12, JULY 20, 1982, BARREDO, J.

FACTS: The records show that private respondents have a manning contract for a period of one (1) year with petitioner in
representation of its principal Kyoei Tanker Co. Ltd. Three months after the commencement of their employment, the seamen
demanded a 50% increase of their salaries and benefits while their vessel was en route to a port in Australia controlled by the
International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) where the ITF could detain the vessel unless it paid its seamen the ITF rates. The
agent of the owner of the vessel agreed to pay a 25% increase, but when the vessel arrived in Japan shortly afterwards, the seamen
were repatriated and their contracts were terminated.

ISSUE: WON the seamen were illegally dismissed by the Company.

HELD: YES, the termination of the seamen’s contract is illegal.

RATIO: Filipino seamen are admittedly as competent and reliable as seamen from any other country in the world; otherwise, there
would not be so many of them in the vessels sailing in every ocean and sea on this globe. It is competence and reliability, not cheap
labor, that makes our seamen so greatly in demand. Filipino seamen have never demanded the same high salaries as seamen from
the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and other developed nations. But certainly, they are entitled to government protection
when they ask for fair and decent treatment by their employers and when they exercise the right to petition for improved terms of
employment according to internationally accepted rules.

The form contracts approved by the National Seamen Board [now POEA] are designed to protect Filipinos, not foreign shipowners
who can take care of themselves. The standard forms embody the basic minimums which must be incorporated as parts of the
employment contract. They are not collective bargaining agreements or immutable contracts which the parties cannot improve
upon or modify in the course of the agreed peril of time. To state, therefore, that the affected seamen cannot petition their employer
for higher salaries during the 12-month duration of the contract runs counter to established principles of labor legislation.