7 Goma v. Pamploma Plantation 2. Respondent denied hiring petitioner as its regular employee.
It argues that
G.R. No. 160905 | 4 July 2008 | Employer-Employee Relationship | Nachura | Santos
PETITIONER: Bienvido Goma
RESPONDENTS: Pamplona Plantation Incorporated
RECIT-READY: Goma filed a complaint for illegal dismissal against petitioner. He
claimed that he worked as a carpenter for respondent beginning 1995 until 1997,
when without just cause, he was refused to be given work assignments.
Respondent argues that even assuming petitioner can be considered an
employee, he is merely considered as a project employee. This was refuted by
respondent himself in its petition before the CA and admitted that they hired
petitioner. The SC held that the test to determine whether employees are project
employees as distinguished from regular employees, is whether or not the
employees were assigned to carry out a specific project or undertaking, the
duration and scope of which were specified at the time the employees were
engaged for that project. In this case, respondent had not shown that he was
informed that he would be assigned to a specific project or undertaking. Neither
was it established that he was informed of the duration and scope of such project
of such project or undertaking at the time of the engagement. What determines
whether a certain employment is regular or otherwise is not the will or word of the
employer, by which the worker often yields to. It is the character of the activities
performed by the employee in relation to the particular trade or business of the
employer.
DOCTRINE: What determines whether a certain employment is regular or
otherwise is not the will or word of the employer, by which the worker often yields
to. Neither is the procedure of hiring the employee nor the manner of paying the
salary or the actual time spent at work. It is the character of the activities
performed by the employee in relation to the particular trade or business of the
employer, taking into account all the circumstances, including the legth of time of
its performance and its continued existence.
FACTS:
1. Petitioner filed a complaint for illegal dismissal before the RTC of
Dumaguete City. He claimed that he worked continuously as a carpenter at
the Hacienda Pamplona since 1995 until 1997 and he worked daily with a
salary rate of 90.00php paid weekly. On the claim that he was a regular
employee, petitioner alleged to have been illegally dismissed when the
respondent without just cause refused to give him any work assignment.
petitioner was hired by a certain Antoy, the manager of the hacienda before
ownership and management was transferred to respondent. It adds that it
was not obliged to absorb the the employees of the former owner.
3. LA dismissed the cased and concluded that petitioner was hired by the
former owner and was not an employee of respondent. NLRC reversed,
sustaining that existence of an empoyer-employee relationship. CA
concluded there was no employer-employee relationship, ruling that
respondent was not required to absorb such employees because
employment contracts are in personam and binding only between such
parties.
4. Respondent argues that even assuming petitioner can be considered an
employee, he cannot be classified as a regular employee, but merely as a
project employee whose services was hired only with respect to a specific
job and only while that specific job existed.
ISSUE: W/N petitioner is a regular employee of the respondent?
RULING:
1. Petitioner is a regular employee. While petitioner admitted having been
employed by the former owner or before respondent took over the
management and ownership of the plantation, he alleges that he was hired
by respondent as a carpenter in 1995 – 1997.
2. Respondent despite denying that it hired petitioner, made the following
admission in his petition before the CA: As regards those workers who
worked in 1995 specifically in connection with the construction of the
facilities of Pamplona Plantation Leisure Corpratoon, their employment was
temporary in character.
- It thus departed from its initial stand that it never hired
petitioner. The respondent eventually admitted the existence of
employer-employee relationship before the CA.
- In Pamplon Plantation v. Tinghil, the SC perieced the veil of
corporate fiction and declared that the two corporations, PPLC
and respondent, are one and the same.
3. There are two kinds of regular employees: Regular Employees by Nature
of Work – employees who perform a particular acitivity which is necessary
or desirable in the usual business or trade of the employer, regardless of the
length of service; Regular Employees by Years of Service – employees
who have been performing the job, regardless of nature thereof, for at least
a year.
- If the employee has been performing the job for at least one
year, even if the performance is not continuous or merely
 intermittent, the law deems the repeated and continuing need
for its performance as sufficient evidence of the necessity, if
not indispensability, of that activity to the business.
4. The argument of respondent does not hold water. A project employee is
assigned to carry out a specific project or undertaking, the duration and
scope of which are specified at the time the employee is engaged in the
project. Most importantly, respondent did not report the termination of
petitioner’s supposed project employment to DOLE.
5. What determines whether a certain employment is regular or otherwise is
not the will or word of the employer, by which the worker often yields to.
Neither is the procedure of hiring the employee nor the manner of paying the
salary or the actual time spent at work. It is the character of the activities
performed by the employee in relation to the particular trade or business of
the employer, taking into account all the circumstances, including the legth
of time of its performance and its continued existence.