Case No.

3
PBM v. PBM, 51 SCRA 189 (1973)

EN BANC
PHILIPPINE BLOOMING MILLS EMPLOYMENT ORGANIZATION, NICANOR
TOLENTINO, FLORENCIO, PADRIGANO RUFINO, ROXAS MARIANO DE LEON,
ASENCION PACIENTE, BONIFACIO VACUNA, BENJAMIN PAGCU and RODULFO
MUNSOD, petitioners,
vs.
PHILIPPINE BLOOMING MILLS CO., INC. and COURT OF INDUSTRIAL
RELATIONS, respondents.
G.R. No. L-31195, June 5, 1973
MAKASIAR, J.:

TOPIC: Doctrine of Preferred Freedom (Hierarchy of Rights)

While the Bill of Rights also protects property rights, the primacy of human rights
over property rights is recognized;

In the hierarchy of civil liberties, the rights of free expression and of assembly
occupy a preferred position.

FACTS:

The petitioner Philippine Blooming Mills Employees Organization (PBMEO) is a legitimate labor
union composed of the employees of the respondent Philippine Blooming Mills Co., Inc., with the
officers and members of the petitioner Union.

Petitioners informed the respondent employers of their schedule for a mass demonstration on
March 1, 1969 in protest for the alleged abuses of the Pasig police. The parties stipulated that the
company, after learning the mass demonstration, informed the union panel that they even if the
demonstration is an inalienable right granted by the Constitution, it should not unduly prejudice
the normal operation of the company.

As such, they warned the PBMEO representatives that workers who belong to the first and regular
shifts, who without previous leave of absence approved by the Company, particularly , the officers
present who are the organizers of the demonstration, who shall fail to report for work the following
morning (March 4, 1969) shall be dismissed, because such failure is a violation of the existing
CBA (collective bargaining agreement which fixes the working shifts of the employees)
particularly Article XXIV: NO LOCKOUT — NO STRIKE’; and, therefore, would be amounting
to an illegal strike.

In their answer, petitioners claim that they did not violate the existing CBA because they gave the
respondent Company prior notice of the mass demonstration on March 4, 1969; that the said mass
demonstration was a valid exercise of their constitutional freedom of speech and an exercise of
their freedom to peaceable assembly against the alleged abuses of some Pasig policemen; and that
their mass demonstration was not a declaration of strike because it was not directed against the
respondent firm.

After considering the aforementioned stipulation of facts submitted by the parties, Judge Joaquin
M. Salvador, in an order dated September 15, 1969, found herein petitioner PBMEO guilty of
bargaining in bad faith and herein petitioners, as directly responsible for perpetrating the said
unfair labor practice were considered to have lost their status as employees of the respondent
Company.

ISSUE: Whether the respondents’ act of concluding that the petitioners acted in bad
faith for proceeding with the demonstration and expelling them from the
company is unconstitutional.

HELD:

No. The pretension of their employer that it would suffer loss or damage by reason of the absence
of its employees is a plea for the preservation merely of their property rights. Such apprehended
loss or damage would not spell the difference between the life and death of the firm or its owners
or its management.

While the Bill of Rights also protects property rights, the primacy of human rights over
property rights is recognized. Because these freedoms are “delicate and vulnerable, as well as
supremely precious in our society” and the “threat of sanctions may deter their exercise almost as
potently as the actual application of sanctions,” they “need breathing space to survive,” permitting
government regulation only “with narrow specificity.”

In the hierarchy of civil liberties, the rights of free expression and of assembly occupy a
preferred position as they are essential to the preservation and vitality of our civil and political
institutions; and such priority "gives these liberties the sanctity and the sanction not permitting
dubious intrusions."

The superiority of these freedoms over property rights is underscored by the fact that a mere
reasonable or rational relation between the means employed by the law and its object or purpose
— that the law is neither arbitrary nor discriminatory nor oppressive — would suffice to validate
a law which restricts or impairs property rights. On the other hand, a constitutional or valid
infringement of human rights requires a more stringent criterion, namely existence of a grave and
immediate danger of a substantive evil which the State has the right to prevent.

In seeking sanctuary behind their freedom of expression well as their right of assembly and of
petition against alleged persecution of local officialdom, the employees and laborers of herein
private respondent firm were fighting for their very survival, utilizing only the weapons afforded
them by the Constitution — the untrammelled enjoyment of their basic human rights. The
condition in which the employees found themselves vis-a-vis the local police of Pasig, was a matter
that vitally affected their right to individual existence as well as that of their families. Material
loss can be repaired or adequately compensated. The debasement of the human being broken
in morale and brutalized in spirit-can never be fully evaluated in monetary terms.
The primacy of human rights — freedom of expression, of peaceful assembly and of petition
for redress of grievances — over property rights has to be sustained.

There was a lack of human understanding or compassion on the part of the firm in rejecting the
request of the Union for excuse from work for the day shifts in order to carry out its mass
demonstration. And to regard as a ground for dismissal the mass demonstration held against the
Pasig police, not against the company, is gross vindictiveness on the part of the employer, which
is as unchristian as it is unconstitutional.

The respondent company is the one guilty of unfair labor practice. Because the refusal on the part
of the respondent firm to permit all its employees and workers to join the mass demonstration
against alleged police abuses and the subsequent separation of the eight (8) petitioners from the
service constituted an unconstitutional restraint on the freedom of expression, freedom of assembly
and freedom petition for redress of grievances, the respondent firm committed an unfair labor
practice defined in Section 4(a-1) in relation to Section 3 of Republic Act No. 875, otherwise
known as the Industrial Peace Act. Section 3 of Republic Act No. 8 guarantees to the employees
the right “to engage in concert activities for … mutual aid or protection”; while Section 4(a-1)
regards as an unfair labor practice for an employer interfere with, restrain or coerce employees in
the exercise their rights guaranteed in Section Three.” The insistence on the part of the respondent
firm that the workers for the morning and regular shift should not participate in the mass
demonstration, under pain of dismissal, was as heretofore stated, “a potent means of inhibiting
speech.”

Apart from violating the constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly as well as the right
to petition for redress of grievances of the employees, the dismissal constitutes a denial of social
justice likewise assured by the fundamental law to these lowly employees. Section 5 of Article II
of the Constitution imposes upon the State “the promotion of social justice to insure the well-
being and economic security of all of the people,” which guarantee is emphasized by the other
directive in Section 6 of Article XIV of the Constitution that “the State shall afford protection
to labor …”. Respondent Court of Industrial Relations as an agency of the State is under obligation
at all times to give meaning and substance to these constitutional guarantees in favor of the
working man; for otherwise these constitutional safeguards would be merely a lot of “meaningless
constitutional patter.”

WHEREFORE, judgement is hereby rendered:

(1) setting aside as null and void the orders of the respondent Court of Industrial Relations dated
September 15 and October 9, 1969; and
(2) directing the re instatement of the herein eight (8) petitioners, with full back pay from the date
of their separation from the service until re instated, minus one day’s pay and whatever earnings
they might have realized from other sources during their separation from the service.

With costs against private respondent Philippine Blooming Company, Inc.