This position blatantly defied a ruling of the Supreme Court handed down in February 1991 (and later upheld on appeal), in which the court concluded: “The Court agrees with the NLRC’s [National Labor Relations Commission] findings that the Retirement Plan was a collective bargaining issue from the start...” Several days after the strike vote on November 22, 2001, Patricia A. Santo Tomas, then-Secretary of the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE), granted the company's petition for a notorious "assumption of jurisdiction" order, arbitrarily placing the dispute into the hands of the state and its apparatus of repression.
Isang dekada nang napakailap ng katarungan sa kabila ng pagiging lehitimo, makatwiran at may moral na batayan ang ipinagtatanggol ng mga manggagawa, “Igalang at ipatupad ng dambuhalang kapitalistang Nestlé ang Supreme Court decision noong 1991”. Pinal na desisyon ito ng Korte Suprema sa panahon ni Chief Justice Andres Narvasa noong 1991 na resulta ng tagumpay ng lahat ng mga manggagawa sa Nestlé Phils. sa ilalim ng UFE-DFA-KMU sa dibisyon ng Alabang Factory, Cabuyao Factory, Cagayan de Oro Factory at Makati Admin Office.