FACTS: Respondent was employed by petitioner as key account specialist on April 17, 2000. On March 9, 2001, petitioner informed respondent that her probationary employment will be severed at the close of the business hours of March 12, 2001. On March 13, 2001, respondent was refused entry to petitioner’s premises.
Respondent filed a complaint on June 24, 2002 against petitioner for illegal dismissal and underpayment/non-payment of monetary benefits. Respondent alleged that petitioner feigned an excess in manpower because after her dismissal, it hired new recruits. On the other hand, petitioner claimed that respondent was a probationary employee whose services were terminated as a result of the excess manpower that could no longer be accommodated by the company.
On June 16, 2003, the Labor Arbiter rendered a decision declaring respondent a regular employee because her employment exceeded six months and holding that she was illegally dismissed as there was no authorized cause to terminate her employment. The Arbiter further ruled that petitioner’s failure to rebut respondent’s claim that it hired additional employees after she was dismissed belie the company’s alleged redundancy.
The NLRC and the two Divisions of the Court of Appeals consistently held that respondent is a regular employee of petitioner company.
ISSUE: Whether or not respondent is a regular employee of petitioner, and whether the respondent was illegally dismissed.
RULING: The Supreme Court held that while it is true that by way of exception, the period of probationary employment may exceed six months when the parties so agree, such as when the same is established by company policy, or when it is required by the nature of the work, none of this exceptional circumstance were proven in the present case. Hence, respondent whose employment exceeded six months is undoubtedly a regular employee of petitioner. The respondent is a regular employee because by the time she was dismissed, her alleged probationary employment already exceeded six months.
Having ruled that respondent is a regular employee, her termination from employment must be for a just or authorized cause, otherwise, her dismissal would be illegal. Petitioner tried to justify the dismissal of respondent under the authorized cause of redundancy. It thus argued in the alternative that even assuming that respondent qualified for regular employment, her services still had to be terminated because there are no more regular positions in the company.
Redundancy, for purposes of the Labor Code, exists where the services of an employee are in excess of what is reasonably demanded by the actual requirements of the enterprise. Succinctly put, a position is redundant where it is superfluous, and superfluity of a position or positions may be the outcome of a number of factors, such as over-hiring of workers, decreased volume of business, or dropping of a particular product line or service activity previously manufactured or undertaken by the enterprise.
Moreover, the lingering doubt as to the existence of redundancy or of petitioner’s so called “restructuring, realignment or reorganization” which resulted in the dismissal of not only probationary employees but also of regular employees, is highlighted by the non-presentation by petitioner of the required notice to the DOLE and to the separated employees. If there was indeed a valid redundancy effected by petitioner, these notices and the proof of payment of separation pay to the dismissed regular employees should have been offered to establish that there was excess manpower.
