FACTS: Private respondent Corfarm Holdings Corporation is a duly organized domestic corporation that operates and manages MERALCO Commissary for the benefit of MERALCO employees. Private respondents are the President and Vice President of said corporation.In their respective employment contracts with Corfarm, it was stipulated that their employment shall be coterminous with the effectivity of the contract executed by and between Corfarm and MERALCO for the management of the latter’s commissary.
After more than a year, said management contract between Corfarm and MERALCO expired. However, Corfarm continued to operate the MERALCO commissary despite the non-renewal of said contract. Petitioners received a memorandum, from private respondents terminating their services allegedly for two reasons: 1) the expiration of their employment contracts, these being coterminous with the management contract between Corfarm and MERALCO, and; 2) the on-going evaluation of their past performances, and investigation of the internal auditor of Corfarm of certain anomalous transactions involving them.
ISSUE: Whether or not the expiration of a contract which is coterminous with the effectivity of the contract executed by and between Corfarm and MERALCO shall also terminate the employment of its employees.
RULING: No. The expiration of a contract even if coterminous with the effectivity of the contract executed by and between Corfarm and MERALCO shall not terminate the employment of its employees without just or authorized caused.
The Supreme Court has held that, if the employee has been performing the job for at least one (1) year, even if the performance is not continuous but 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 of his employer. Hence, the employment is also considered regular, but only with respect to such activity, and while such activity exists. The law does not provide the qualification that the employee must first be issued a regular appointment or must first be formally declared as such before he can acquire a regular employee statues. Obviously, where the law does not distinguish, no distinction should be drawn.
Considering therefore, the validity of the labor arbiter’s finding that the management contract between MERALCO and Corfarm has been extended, i.e., it continues to have force and effect, it necessarily follows that petitioners’ respective employment contracts with Corfarm likewise remain in force.
In the case at bar, petitioners had been employed with private respondent Corfarm since 1991. They had been discharging their functions as head of commissary and store supervisor, respectively, for more than one (1) year. Under the law therefore, they are deemed regular employees and thus entitled to security of tenure.
Note: With regard to the requirement of a hearing, this Court has held that the essence of due process is simply an opportunity to be heard, and not that an actual hearing should always and indispensably be held.
