FACTS: Coca-Cola Bottlers Phils., Inc., herein petitioner, engaged the services of respondent workers as “sales route helpers” for a limited period of five months. After five months, respondent workers were employed by petitioner-company on a day-to-day basis. According to petitioner-company, respondent workers were hired to substitute for regular sales route helpers whenever the latter would be unavailable or when there would be an unexpected shortage of manpower in any of its work places or an unusually high volume of work. The practice was for the workers to wait every morning outside the gates of the sales office of petitioner-company. If thus hired, the workers would then be paid their wages at the end of the day.
Ultimately, respondent workers asked petitioner-company to extend to them regular appointments but petitioner-company refused. Herein respondents filed with the National Labor Relations Commission a complaint for the regularization of their employment with petitioner-company.
ISSUE: Whether or not the nature of work of respondents in the company is of such nature as to be deemed necessary and desirable in the usual business or trade of petitioner that could qualify them to be regular employees.
RULING: Yes, the nature of work of respondents in the company is of such nature as to be deemed necessary and desirable in the usual business or trade of petitioner that could qualify them to be regular employees.
In determining whether an employment should be considered regular or non-regular, the applicable test is the reasonable connection between the particular activity performed by the employee in relation to the usual business or trade of the employer. The standard, supplied by the law itself, is whether the work undertaken is necessary or desirable in the usual business or trade of the employer, a fact that can be assessed by looking into the nature of the services rendered and its relation to the general scheme under which the business or trade is pursued in the usual course. It is distinguished from a specific undertaking that is divorced from the normal activities required in carrying on the particular business or trade.
In this case, the repeated rehiring of respondent workers and the continuing need for their services clearly attest to the necessity or desirability of their services in the regular conduct of the business or trade of petitioner-company. The respondents have worked for at least one year with petitioner-company. The pernicious practice of having employees, workers and laborers, engaged for a fixed period of few months, short of the normal six-month probationary period of employment, and, thereafter, to be hired on a day-to-day basis, mocks the law. Any obvious circumvention of the law cannot be countenanced. The fact that respondent workers have agreed to be employed on such basis and to forego the protection given to them on their security of tenure, demonstrate nothing more than the serious problem of impoverishment of so many of our people and the resulting unevenness between labor and capital.
A contract of employment is impressed with public interest. The provisions of applicable statutes are deemed written into the contract, and the parties are not at liberty to insulate themselves and their relationships from the impact of labor laws and regulations by simply contracting with each other.
