Case Digest: Ilaw at Buklod ng Manggagawa v. NLRC, June 27, 1999

Labor Law | Art. 124

Facts:

• The union "Ilaw at Buklod Ng Manggagawa (IBM)" representing 4,500 employees of San Miguel Corporation (SMC) demanded correction of wage distortions as per Section 4(d) of RA 6727.
• SMC ignored the demand, offering a minimal wage increase which the union rejected. Workers, in response, refused to work overtime.
• The workers implemented an eight-hour work shift, deviating from the previous ten to fourteen-hour shifts, causing substantial losses for SMC.
• SMC filed a complaint against the union in the Arbitration Branch of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) to declare the strike illegal and terminate union officers' employment. SMC also filed a complaint directly with the NLRC for an injunction against the slowdown and damages.

• NLRC: Issued a Temporary Restraining Order, directing the union to cease the slowdown and adhere to the previous work schedule.

Issue:

WoN wage distortion is not a valid ground for a strike or lockout. NO

Held:

The legislative intent that solution of the problem of wage distortions shall be sought by voluntary negotiation or abitration, and not by strikes, lockouts, or other concerted activities of the employees or management, is made clear in the rules implementing RA 6727 issued by the Secretary of Labor and Employment pursuant to the authority granted by Section 13 of the Act.

Section 16, Chapter I of these implementing rules, after reiterating the policy that wage distortions be first settled voluntarily by the parties and eventually by compulsory arbitration, declares that, "Any issue involving wage distortion shall not be a ground for a strike/lockout."

Moreover, the collective bargaining agreement between the SMC and the Union, relevant provisions of which are quoted by the former without the latter's demurring to the accuracy of the quotation, also prescribes a similar eschewal of strikes or other similar or related concerted activities as a mode of resolving disputes or controversies, generally, said agreement clearly stating that settlement of "all disputes, disagreements or controversies of any kind" should be achieved by the stipulated grievance procedure and ultimately by arbitration. 

The Union was thus prohibited to declare and hold a strike or otherwise engage in non-peaceful concerted activities for the settlement of its controversy with SMC in respect of wage distortions, or for that matter; any other issue "involving or relating to wages, hours of work, conditions of employment and/or employer-employee relations." The partial strike or concerted refusal by the Union members to follow the five-year-old work schedule which they had therefore been observing, resorted to as a means of coercing correction of "wage distortions," was therefore forbidden by law and contract and, on this account, illegal.

Awareness by the Union of the proscribed character of its members' collective activities, is clearly connoted by its attempt to justify those activities as a means of protesting and obtaining redress against said members working overtime every day from Monday to Friday (on an average of 12 hours), and every Saturday (on 8 hour shifts),15 rather than as a measure to bring about rectification of the wage distortions caused by RA 6727 — which was the real cause of its differences with SMC. By concealing the real cause of their dispute with management (alleged failure of correction of wage distortion), and trying to make it appear that the controversy involved application of the eight-hour labor law, they obviously hoped to remove their case from the operation of the rules implementing RA 6727 that "Any issue involving wage distortion shall not be a ground for a strike/lockout." The stratagem cannot succeed.

In the first place, that it was indeed the wage distortion issue that principally motivated the Union's partial or limited strike is clear from the facts, The work schedule (with "built-in overtime") had not been forced upon the workers; it had been agreed upon between SMC and its workers at the Polo Plant and indeed, had been religiously followed with mutually beneficial results for the past five (5) years. Hence, it could not be considered a matter of such great prejudice to the workers as to give rise to a controversy between them and management. Furthermore, the workers never asked, nor were there ever any negotiations at their instance, for a change in that work schedule prior to the strike. What really bothered them, and was in fact the subject of talks between their representatives and management, was the "wage distortion" question, a fact made even more apparent by the joint notice circulated by them prior to the strike, i.e., that they would adopt the eight-hour work shift in the meantime pending correction by management of the wage distortion (IPATUPAD MUNA ANG EIGHT HOURS WORK SHIFT PANSAMANTALA HABANG HINDI IPINATUTUPAD NG SMC MANAGEMENT ANG TAMANG WAGE DISTORTION).

In the second place, even if there were no such legal prohibition, and even assuming the controversy really did not involve the wage distortions caused by RA 6727, the concerted activity in question would still be illicit because contrary to the workers' explicit contractual commitment "that there shall be no strikes, walkouts, stoppage or slowdown of work, boycotts, secondary boycotts, refusal to handle any merchandise, picketing, sit-down strikes of any kind, sympathetic or general strikes, or any other interference with any of the operations of the COMPANY during the term of . . . (their collective bargaining) agreement.16

What has just been said makes unnecessary resolution of SMC's argument that the workers' concerted refusal to adhere to the work schedule in force for the last several years, is a slowdown, an inherently illegal activity essentially illegal even in the absence of a no-strike clause in a collective bargaining contract, or statute or rule. The Court is in substantial agreement with the petitioner's concept of a slowdown as a "strike on the installment plan;" as a wilfull reduction in the rate of work by concerted action of workers for the purpose of restricting the output of the employer, in relation to a labor dispute; as an activity by which workers, without a complete stoppage of work, retard production or their performance of duties and functions to compel management to grant their demands. The Court also agrees that such a slowdown is generally condemned as inherently illicit and unjustifiable, because while the employees "continue to work and remain at their positions and accept the wages paid to them," they at the same time "select what part of their allotted tasks they care to perform of their own volition or refuse openly or secretly, to the employer's damage, to do other work;" in other words, they "work on their own terms. But whether or not the workers' activity in question — their concerted adoption of a different work schedule than that prescribed by management and adhered to for several years — constitutes a slowdown need not, as already stated, be gone into. Suffice it to say that activity is contrary to the law, RA 6727, and the parties' collective bargaining agreement.